Mega Man X: Whispers In Time
by Erico
Summary: The Inhabitants of the original Mega Man series speak their peace, of the end of their era and the coming one of Mega Man X...
1. Foreword

**__**

MEGA MAN X: WHISPERS IN TIME

By Erico

FOREWORD

We are all aware of the events that unfold in the video games of Mega Man and Mega Man X. We all know of the fight against Wily. We all recount of the heroic tales of the unlikely hero, Mega Man X, rising up to shatter Sigma's dark desires. 

These are known. These are commonplace. These are accepted as fact, as truth…

And yet for all we DO know, can we say the same of the unknown spaces in time?

This is the purpose of this next project of mine. It isn't a Novel. It isn't a dramatic retelling of a video game. No, what this journey seeks to explain is that forgotten region of time, the section between the ages of Mega Man and Mega Man X that Capcom, that nobody truly holds a grasp on.

This is what I believe to be true, this is what I have decided from the known facts, from my own whimsy, and from various general beliefs in the Mega Man community.

So I leave you with that. Now is the time for something more…

Now will the dawning of the forgotten plight at last be revealed…

And the Universe opened itself, and at last, the truth was known.


	2. Prologue

**__**

MEGA MAN X: WHISPERS IN TIME

By Erico

PROLOGUE

_The things I have witnessed in my time…the horrors, the battles, the tears and grief and anguish borne from those who would determine the way of the world…_

Would I ask you to take this burden from me?? YES…

I know things that were never told before, tales of sorrow and suffering from the shapers…

You know the shapers. They were the ones who made the world into what you know. But even that might not be enough…Perhaps a name, yes, I'll mention a name…

MEGA MAN.

He was but one of the shapers. Like all revolutions before it, it can be started by one, but it must be continued by far more. The Blue Bomber was the center of that group, most definitely…all others are connected to him. By friendship. By mistrust. By bitter, insane hatred.

The burden I carry is heavy…I KNOW THE TRUTH. I KNOW WHAT HAPPENED…I know every facet of that dreadful incident of 2085…

Of how one age was ended, and how the stage was set for another.

But…would you be willing to share that burden?? Are you truly ready to carry the heady message of those days??

I cannot decide right or wrong…I am just the Earth that they walked on, that they bled on, that they died on. You, YOU, who would seek this knowledge…It is up to you now to decide what you can do with this.

But perhaps the accounts of that time would be best spoken not from me, but from them…

The voices, the people, the souls that lived and died in that time. THEY were the source, the cause, and the solution to that crisis. Hearing it from them…might hold more depth, more power than I could hope to reveal.

So now, go and seek the truth…

By the Whispers In Time.


	3. Let There Be Light

_**MEGA MAN X: WHISPERS IN TIME**_

By Erico

CHAPTER ONE: LET THERE BE LIGHT

I don't suppose that many people in the world could relate to my life experiences. For one, how many other individuals in the world are highly skilled robotologists who are responsible for creating not one, but TWO generations of robots…

My name is Thomas Xavier Light. Sometimes, it is mispronounced Right. It's always unsettling when I hear that, for there are times I wonder if I truly was right…

But I must start somewhere…from the beginning, I suppose…

Once upon a time, the world stood on unstable footing. Its inhabitants were fresh from a long period of restoration, of long-lived rebuilding. Wars are like that…they can last only a brief amount of time, but the damage always takes far longer to recover from.

I don't know why I chose the career I did. At the time, robots were just that. In the crudest sense of the word. Non-sentient automatons controlled remotely, or issued strict directives. When I arrived in the field, robots were little more than tinker toys. Tiny little insect bots and rovers sent to the farthest corners of the world, and for a longer period of time, into the vastness of space.

This is where Will comes in. Well, to be accurate, Albert. Albert William Wily. But I called him Will. He was the most grounded individual I knew then, morose and embittered by the world's self-destructive nature. Somehow, we found a mutual respect in one another. Perhaps because the both of us wanted to turn the field of robotics into something more than what it was.

Will was a robot designer. He built the shells, the inner servos and wiring, connected the photoreceptors that allowed them to see, the auditory sensors that let them hear…He was a robotologist of the body.

And somehow, I became a robotologist of the mind. Sometimes Will would scoff and try to put down my efforts with that rakish grin of his, that slightly curled smile that caused his mustache to twist just so…But I knew he supported me. Robots could become more than what they were. Long, so very long had science fiction of the 20th Century spoken of robots with minds, almost human in their workings…Isaac Asimov's robots were equipped with the Three Rules of Robotics. Sometimes they were called Laws.

Our quest wasn't easy…Over time, we managed to create LightTech industries, a conglomerate that built robots of every size and purpose. Trash compactors, sentries, and even tiny little robots less than a foot tall with comical yellow hard hats and wide, humorous optics known as 'Metools'. We had particular success with a line of robots called 'EDDYs', or as I call them, 'Eddies.' It was these robots we based our corporation, our financial successes on. In a world devastated by mankind's stupidity and violence, robots provided a source of labor able to withstand the new extremes in climate created by War. They could go places, do things that humans could not. They were cheaper. They didn't argue, didn't grow tired, didn't ask for coffee breaks. The world quickly adopted robots.

But it wasn't that which I based my life's ambitions on.

We had created only more advanced automatons, capable of moving about on their own power, of doing more than a few programmed lines of code like 'scan' and 'move when you reach an obstacle.' They could think for themselves, to a limited extent…but they still needed controllers.

This was where Will and I at long last had the time, the chance to move on and think once more of our next generation of robots. What was needed then was a more highly advanced robot, one capable of giving orders and handling large crowds of less intelligent robots with ease, without breaking down from the added strain. What the world demanded, and what we now sought to create…was Robot Masters.

In 2067, we created our first prototype…I have, and have always had varied tastes in music. We designed him…yes, HIM…to resemble a teenaged boy. Affectionately, I named him Blues.

The first few days with Blues were interesting. He had most of his knowledge already preprogrammed into him…his language capabilities, his motor controls, a general knowledge of the world, and of course, the Three Laws of Robotics, which Will and I had put in every robot of our creation since the very founding of LightTech industries (save for certain 'military' models that we hated having to design and construct). What was interesting was Blues learned more than that. He attained more knowledge, he found a sense of self…

In short, Blues did something that no other robot before him had ever done. He became close to human…He argued, he had idiosyncrasies, he sometimes ignored orders, breaking the Second Law…

Will was completely stupefied at the occurrence at first, then merely annoyed. Blues had such a habit of whistling…

I never did discover how I had done it, how I gave Blues that sense of humanity about him…

We lost Blues in a tragic lab accident in the earliest stages of experimental warp transport technology. We thought him dead…until he arrived three years later, no worse for wear.

I didn't know it then, but that lab accident also had another victim…Will, who I will now from this point onward refer to as Wily…was affected by that transport field.

This is why warp transport is not safe for humans, you see…It warps your mind, alters pathways…continued use can cause one to turn insane, much like mercury in men's hats did back in the 1800's. Even then, Wily began to change…

Saddened by the loss of Blues, we moved on. We built another, and built a female counterpart to him…

We called them Rock and Roll. In Roll, we gave less experimental brain pathways. But we needed to try and keep one as highly advanced as possible, so it was Rock who received the experimental neural pathways and construction. Wily and I had scrutinized over Blues' construction for the longest time, trying to figure out what had caused that fluke in him…it had made him more than a robot, but it also contained the dangerous side effect that Blues could disobey the Laws. More than once he refused a direct order from Wily and myself. We thought Rock safe from this 'disruption', this deadly quirk.

After Rock and Roll came the TRUEST forms of Robot Masters. We made them even less advanced than even Roll, who even with her less advanced pathways, had developed a personality that became acidic and testy at times. There were six of them then, designed to work in various areas.

The public clamored for the Robot Masters. Orders came in all over the place…

Soon, the wilderness reclamation models and energy controlling models were seen almost everywhere one went. They became as basic a necessity as the other robots had been before then.

And this was when Wily went mad…

He took the six original Robot Masters with him, and almost succeeded in taking Rock…were it not for the mixed blessing that like Blues before him, Rock had the capacity to resist, to BREAK the Laws. Not the FIRST Law, thank the heavens above, but still, it was more than a little unnerving…

With those six Robot Masters, Wily began a mad crusade across the world, intending in all his paranoia to rule it with his iron fist, a fist cast by the robots under his guidance. He had altered and raped the Laws in those robots, making the Laws applicable only to himself…

Rock changed during that time. I didn't know how he did it…but he decided that it was up to him to stop Wily.

And he did.

And did again.

And again. Wily always came back, a cockroach that Rock could stop, but never kill because of his programming…

And he was more than just Rock then. He was Rockman.

Or as the world now widely accepts him as now…Mega Man.

* * *

You are doubtless asking yourself, why would I go and mention that…

Because there is no other way to reveal the early inklings of that flaw in Blues, and then in Mega Man, that glimmered with the faint hope that they were more than mere robots.

Years would pass. We would gain new allies, and Wily would be stopped countless times, always coming back.

And in my spare time, I found myself delegating to that sole question that had haunted me since 2067, since Blues, and then once again in 2070 and onwards with my only other son, Mega Man...

_Just what the devil was causing that flaw…WHAT had made them more than they were supposed to be…_

It would take years…

It was 2080 by the time I finally realized what caused it. And the truth of it stunned me so much I made no mention of it to anyone. Not even Rock, Roll, and Blues, my dear, dear children…

I never did have a wife and family of my own…The War, and then all of my life's work overrode any chance at that. All I had was them…My two sons and one daughter, not of flesh, but of metal…

But that glitch…IT WASN'T A GLITCH!! IT WASN'T A FLAW!! It was a MIRACLE, so unbelievable and outstanding and convoluted it took me ten years to find it…

Unknowingly, I had given my sons, and to an extent, my daughter, a minimal upgrade to their mind. They were more than mere robots, I had DESIGNED THEM like that. Without ever knowing it, I gave them a gift of intelligence…no, of SENTIENCE that I never could have dreamed of.

That was how it happened, how they were sometimes able to break the Second and Third Laws. A part of their minds was more human than robotic…

It was then I realized I could make a robot with a mind constructed SOLELY on that 'glitch'. A mind completely like that…in short, I could make a completely human robot.

Work on him, my next robot, whom I affectionately called Mega Man X, began in 2081. The others didn't know of him, I didn't WANT them knowing of him…It was mostly plans at that time, for if I was to create a truly human robot, it would take more than a mere mind. It would mean new systems and high level technologies, a totally new and revolutionary concept of energy transfer and body design…

He would be unlike anything ever seen before. Upon first activation, his mind would be in the condition known as 'tabula rasa'…a blank slate. Like a human, his manners, outlook, demeanor, attitude, mannerisms, idiosyncrasies, emotions…all would be determined by his life experiences!! Blues, Rock and Roll had all learned as well, but Mega Man X would represent the highest possible step…

At long last, my lifelong dream was realized in Mega Man X.

* * *

It wasn't much later after that that the Seventh Robot Rebellion began. Of course, Wily was behind it…Wily was ALWAYS behind it. His robots broke him out of prison, and Mega Man ran into an unlikely pair of robots called Bass and Treble. They were also known as Forte and Gospel, but to be simple, Bass was a humanoid robot like Mega Man who passed himself off as a fellow fighter, and Gospel was his gruffish robotic aide, resembling a wolf more than a dog.

The similarity of Bass and Treble to Mega Man and Rush was more than mere coincidence. Wily had built them as counterparts to Mega and his faithful pet. Befriending Mega under false pretenses, Bass made his way into my lab, seeking repairs for damage supposedly sustained in battle…

He tore my lab, my home into pieces, and made off with all the plans in my vault.

The majority of those plans were notes and blueprints for the upgrades for Mega Man and Rush.

But what horrified me so much more…what I was unable to share with my family at the time, was that the plans for Mega Man X were included as well in that parcel Wily's newest machination made off with…

Many more battles and such would occur between then and 2085…

And I would still work diligently on Mega Man X, at long last finishing him, keeping him deactivated in a capsule in the deepest recesses of my lab, in the portion that not even Blues dared enter. Everything I had worked on about X was in that room, I took no more chances, putting that structure even lower below the rest of my lab than everything else.

In the summer of 2085, everything was at last in full preparation, even considering my vastly slowed workspeed. I was older now than I was…years and stress are hard on a man, no matter what they say. And Roll never did manage to chastise me enough to give up my pipe smoking…

And that was when it happened…

The Demon…

* * *

Bass arrived out of the blue, his voice, his face frantic in fear. Even Treble, standing by his side was beaten down and quivering. I had once thought nothing capable of scaring those two…but I was wrong. So very wrong…

Wily had indeed received the plans for Mega Man X, Bass tearfully explained as we sat him down with more than a little unease at his arrival. He had dropped into one of his maniacal rages…pledged never to stop until he too, had built a counterpart to this new Mega Man…

Everyone assembled was stunned, distraught, and dismayed at this news. One, that I had been building Mega Man X behind their backs…and two, that Wily had gone and created a counterpart to him.

But Bass continued on…Something went wrong as Wily's Demon was brought to life. Something went horribly wrong.

The Crimson shaded robot had been awake for all of five seconds, staring out with dull, soulless eyes, before something within him snapped, and he lunged at Wily with a look of murder on his face.

All the robots present had fought valiantly to prevent Wily from suffering injury or death…and all had failed. Wily had built his creation too well, it seemed…No robot lasted long against him. He was too fast, too strong, too intelligent and rabid, like a wild animal unleashed…Bass recounted how

Bass and Treble had barely escaped…they were unable to stop Wily's Demon from rising up and destroying its creator.

But Bass knew one thing all too well, a horrifying fact that he shared with us. Wily's Demon was on its way. To destroy Mega Man, to destroy Mega Man X…and in the process, anything and everything standing in its way. Including us.

We were as strong in numbers and force as we'd ever be…and at all costs, we had to stop Wily's Demon. And we had to protect X, we HAD TO…

* * *

The losses we suffered were far too many…God, what did I do…

Roll, Bass, Mega, Proto, Rush, Eddie, Beat…God, what did I do…

If I hadn't created Mega Man X, then Wily would have never gotten ahold of his plans…He wouldn't have created that red demon…

Only Auto, Treble, and Duo survived that fight…And so did Wily's Demon. Even at their best, all that the combined forces present on that summer's day were able to do was cause the Demon to drop into deep stasis…

Duo was unable to strike the final blow. His powerful left hand had swung down, supercharged with the energy of a far off civilization…But he froze, just as the Demon's awareness gave out and it dropped into a deep coma.

_"This one's future…"_ Duo had begun in a quietly whispering voice. Grief stricken, I tried to destroy the demon myself, running out with a gun. Duo and Auto stopped me before I could do more…and then I wept, a battered and defeated man…

My family…

Wily's Godforsaken Bastard had killed my family…

But I couldn't kill the Demon, no…Duo was obstinate in this. He has the power to read minds, and to a small extent, peer into the future…This Demon was far more important to the future than any of us could have realized…important to Mega Man X, for in a far distant time, they would not be enemies, but friends…

I could scarcely believe it, I thought Duo had gone insane…

But Duo gently took the Demon back to Wily's abandoned lair and placed him back in the capsule which had spawned him. When Duo came back, he told me he had cleaned up the structure and sealed it off, and that the Demon's capsule had reacted, and shut itself off for a period of more than thirty years…

_Thirty years, God…_

Duo left us then. He had done all he could, there was little more to be achieved now.

Only Mega Man was relatively intact after that fight…

_Do you know what it's like to see your oldest son and your only daughter vanish in nuclear fire…_

But Mega, too, was forever destroyed.

I was empty now, hollow, a mere wisp of who I once was…Grief refused to come after that, despite my need for it.

I took Mega Man to my ally Doctor Cossack, and we buried him in an underground Mausoleum in his Citadel…

And that was when I told him of Mega Man X. Cossack was utterly stunned, as the rest of my family had been…

_God, what have I done…What have I created…_

I went back to my laboratory, and began work.

For one, there was X…What if, by some bizarre chance, he developed the same flaw as Wily's creation had…I would be unleashing a new evil, because everything about X was improved…strength, speed, defense…he was more than a match for Mega by his statistics. What would he do to the forces of today??

And so I did the only thing I could…the only rational thing…

_I sealed him away…God, I buried him, my last surviving son…_

I had to. I HAD TO!! I had to make sure that X would not snap into the same fit of rage that Wily's creation had…

_Too much new, too many untested variables…was I right in building X??_

I sealed X's capsule, put him in a corner of my underground structure, allowing it to now live under its own power, free of everything else in my laboratory.

Duo had told me that in his future, X might very well find himself faced with challenges, with obstacles and threats that made even Wily's efforts pale in comparison…

_God, I designed X with the hope he wouldn't have to follow in his brother's footsteps…_

Did I believe Duo?? Perhaps, perhaps not. Duo had left, gone off for some other region of the starry sky, perhaps never to return…All I knew was grief, that and the undeniable truth that…

_Perhaps I had created a monster…_

NO!! I cannot believe that, not now…

X is not the monster, he cannot be…There is too much of his brother in him, even his helmet is Mega Man's, altered, of course, to the new specifications required for his more highly advanced brain and head.

I designed Mega Man X as the first of a new breed of robot, one that would meld humanity and its machines into a perfect union, working side by side instead of servant and master…a utopia for sentient life forms, finding solace and comfort in each other's presence.

Subconsciously, I can find myself believing that X will face horrors in his time, horrors that Mega Man never had to face. I shudder, I face Duo's imprecise readings with the knowledge that even lacking exact truth, holds a grain of predictability, of irony…

_The Mega Men can never escape their fate as being heroes…_

My son never did enjoy having that title thrown on him…Hero…

What is a hero but an overglorified warrior?? Mega Man was not that…There were times I found him, with his underdeveloped sentience looking out to the sunset quietly, eyes somber and glimmering…

I cannot let X face those challenges as he is right now…

Compared to Mega Man, he is strong…to Wily's Demon, he might be equal…

But what of tomorrow's foes, the threats he shall face thirty years from now when the capsule he sleeps in finishes its diagnostic run and allows him to finally awaken??

By the time he awakens, I shall be dead…I am old, I am weary, and my body is slowly turning against me, embittered by all the long years of pipe smoking that make me grow weak from my spasmic coughing on bad days…And the others…

_The others are dead…my fault…_

Was I right in creating X?? Was I right at all to ever DREAM, or to even THINK that this planet might be better off with robots that were more than the mindless automatons that existed when I began? Some days, the anguish weighs heavy on me…

_You cannot give up…Mega, Roll, Blues, even Bass…They gave their LIVES so that X might live…_

I can do only one thing for Mega Man X now…now, as he sleeps in his capsule, I find myself realizing that there is an all too high probability that he shall be faced with the challenge of war…

I must do all I can, to provide for him.

Biological families provide for their families through wills, inheritances…

X will have none of that when he awakens…

But there is something I can give him. The tools, the knowledge, to face these challenges he might find himself placed against…

And so I build once more, I build NEW capsules, designed not to contain Mega Man X or any other…but to hold gifts, assistance, the only thing I can provide for him…

I do not know what the future will hold, and I dearly hope that Duo's dark prediction holds wrong…

But if it true…

Then the capsules will be waiting. Waiting to help transform him, upgrade him, give my last son a chance to survive.

I have sent Auto along with the first batch…He understands all too well that there is nothing more he can do to help me, but that he can serve a final role as the guardian of the First Set's Armor upgrade. I have altered his design, reprogrammed him…Auto knew this, knew that he would effectively die upon that transformation.

"The others are already dead, Doctor." Auto said to me with a look that held more than the simple intelligence I gave him…like all the others, he has become more than what he was… "I must die as well to help X."

Auto will go with that First Set. I hope to God that that is all X will ever need…

But if it is not…

Then the capsules will be waiting. A second set, a third, and so on…

_X…I wish I could do more…_

* * *

It is now 2087. October, 2087…More than two years after…

_I could not prevent their deaths, I could not save them…_

My hands tremble now, my coughing has grown worse…I am near my end, I can feel it…

I have also sent out a final capsule, but unlike the others, it is programmed differently…

All the capsules have been given advanced personal response matrices…

_The design, Christ, how did I pull off the design…_

When I built X, I also added in a specialized chip to his brain, a chip designed to read his thoughts, to a certain extent. At the time, I thought it little more than an extra way to record what would happen inside of his mind, to help see how the revolutionary discovery actually worked…

Now that I realize I will never be around to record and to examine the data, I find myself using that chip in a far different fashion.

The capsules, as they stand, would be of no use to X unless they were nearby. That chip now acts as the beacon for his capsules. Any time he ever thinks to himself, _I'm going to war_ or something of that nature, the capsules will receive that transmission from that chip. This is how they will trigger themselves into full alert, prepare themselves for the journey to wherever X walks. When he approaches one, it will scan his mind's signal and recognize him, and activate the messages I created for the capsules, as well as their item granting capacities. This is how X will receive his capsules, thanks to that chip in his mind…

But I am nobody's fool…perhaps there will come a time that X will not find the capsules on his own, and instead, an ally of his walks that path, trudges to that capsule…

The capsules have a limited AI, nothing near to what X or even Mega and Roll had…But they will always be reading X's mind, identifying friends, identifying foes…These friends will also gain access to the contents within…Thus, X will always receive his enhancements…somehow…

_But the final capsule…_

None of the other capsules, the upgrade capsules I have sent out to aid X hold anything in them to give him the answers he will doubtless ask one day…

_Like why is he alone…what happened that caused all the others in his family to no longer exist…Why, or how he came to be…_

I will not be around to answer those questions, and the upgrade capsules cannot answer that either…

No, I now leave that task to my final project…my final parting gift to the son I shall never know…

The Information Capsule…

* * *

It is done now, my final gift…It has been sent to a safe place where the ages will not touch it, where it shall lay dormant, preserved until such a time as the questions grow too heavy for Mega Man X to deal with, and he shall strike out to find the answers…

He will go to Cossack's place, that Citadel out in the middle of the Siberian wilderness. I know he will. That is where I sent the final capsule…

_I wish I could do more…_

I do not know what the future holds…I have left X's Capsule a message for all who would find it. A warning of sorts, addressed on September 16th of this year. X has been sleeping for longer than that, but at the pace I work, I had yet to leave the capsule with that message…

_My work is all I have left to live for…as long as there are things I still must do to help X, I cannot die…_

But every day now is just too much of a struggle…There is one last thing I must do…

I must ask myself…was all this worth it??

Was my dream of a race of robots living side by side with humans, coexisting peacefully all for naught?? What if, by my own marshmallow dreams of a better world, I have helped to create a nightmare…

_If I had never begun work on X, Wily would have never built his Demon, he would have never…_

* * *

The warning sirens had been blaring for close to forever almost all day in Tokyo. Despite its size, the city had been evacuated. It had to…Mount Fuji had awoken with a fury not seen for as long as most could recall…

Cars, shopping centers, baby carriages, all were left behind as the public fled, hot ash already beginning to darken the sky a somber gray and the oppressive heat of Earth's maw rising up to smother them…

On the outer edge of that massive gem of the orient lay the famed laboratory of Doctor Thomas Xavier Light. None approached it, all assumed that it had long since been abandoned. No phone calls, no transmissions, no deliveries had come or gone from that place for more than two years…surely, there was no one living there. Perhaps Light had thought it was his time, the authorities thought as they whisked the last group of fleeing refugees away to safety…Left his house and laboratory behind, and gone off to someplace quieter…

But someone was watching that final aircraft take off away from the danger zone…someone old, frail, and weakened by all the years of strain he had suffered on his brow since 2070, since the First Robot Rebellion.

He made no attempt to flee…there was nowhere to flee to. And he did not want to flee. Not this time.

The pale fading sky of sunset at last gave way to the billowing cloud of ash and dust of Fuji's fury.

Lying helpless, defeated, yet with an air of hope about him, Doctor Light relaxed in his outside lawn chair and awaited the coming demise.

The dust killed him long before the ash and molten lava at last flung itself free of Earth's womb and was born as death from Fuji's engorged belly.

His weakened body did not even try to cough…It merely gave out, at long last succumbing to the inevitability of defeat, of death…

_I have done all I can now, Mega Man X…_

_I leave it all…in your hands…_

All of Tokyo was destroyed, buried underneath Fuji's fury…

A moratorium was placed over the area, and no one ever approached it again…

Time passed…so many years that its location was forgotten, that it was thought to be another expanse of barren wasteland from humanity's wars of 2040. To say nothing of the trials faced in 2090, as lacking an outside threat like Wily, the rabid dogs of violence unleashed their furies upon each other…

New Tokyo was born, in a different location in Japan. Everything about Old Tokyo was forgotten, its location, its history…

The names of Light, Mega Man, Wily, and everything else surrounding those mythical nomenclatures vanished into the history books, recorded, remembered…but never once acted upon or used to further peace.

It was as if the world simply forgot all about that lost laboratory, and the untold secrets within…

Until April of 2117…

When the undeniable truths came crashing down, and the world found itself in the midst of another revolution.


	4. His Motivation In Life

_**MEGA MAN X: WHISPERS IN TIME**_

By Erico

CHAPTER TWO: HIS MOTIVATION IN LIFE

For years now, my name has been spoken with scorn, with dread, with abject hatred. I have become the emblem, the face that all of humanity spits at and fears at the same time…

_Wasn't always like that, there was a time…_

A time when I wasn't an enemy?? I try to think back…

_Hurts so much, the voices screaming at me…_

Yes, there was a time I wasn't hated. There was a time I was at the top of the world…I was almost a hero then…

_Humanity and its stupid self-destructive nature…_

Tom and I…Light and Wily, the brains behind LightTech industries…

_Humanity is such a pathetic race, unclean, impure, tainted by desires and darkness…_

We almost killed ourselves in the wars of 2040. Stupefyingly, we turned to nuclear weaponry…

_And yet we lived…Because like the cockroaches, we are too stubborn to end our existence when we have done the damage to our planet…_

It was robots, robotics, treeborgs and everything else that we, Tom and I and the rest of the Second Rainbow made from that time…We saved the world from destruction, we reversed the course we had forced upon it. We gave it another chance.

_In the end, were our efforts wasted…We had poisoned the planet, and despite everything we did, there were regions that would not be safe for human life for years to come…Just what kind of damnable intentions did we have trying to save it?! The Earth has seen to itself for far longer than we've been around, and I'm surprised it hasn't killed us off like the infestation we are…_

And just why did we preserve it, protect it, seek to make reparations for our ways?? So we could turn around and damage it again? What were we thinking…WHAT WAS I THINKING…

Wily. Albert William Wily…That is my name, that is who I am. Everyone knows who I am now.

I am the destroyer, I am the madman who bids robots to do his horrifying tasks. I enslave regions, I seek nothing short of total conquest…

_But do they know why?? No, they can't…none of them can know the madness in my mind…_

It wasn't my fault, I didn't deserve to become who I am…

_It was HIM. HIM!!_

No…more than just him…It was them ALL…

No one can know the madness…I didn't choose that madness…I was CURSED with it…

Blues…Blues, back so many years ago…

Tom and Blues and I…That transporter experiment…

_Transporters were new, experimental. They would never be safe for humans to use. We could warp raw materials, that was what we were trying to do then…_

_But it got out of hand…_

* * *

"Tom, SHUT IT DOWN!!" Light pounded the kill switch on his control board, safely behind the boundary that protected him. Despairingly, he looked up to the man who had yelled at him, Wily…then just Will. Blues stood rigidly stark still as the transporting chamber tried to reconstruct the solid cube of steel that they had sent through…

The transporting chamber had scanned every atom of that cube, knew it down to the subatomic level…but even then, the technology just wasn't there, they weren't ready for it…The device was overloading, bringing back a warped and twisted form that was far from the original cube. Now the entire device threatened to blow itself apart from the overload…

"I can't Will!! The controls are all frozen, they won't respond!!"

"I thought you gave the thing triple safeties!" Blues called out, having to shout to make himself heard over the ever increasing maelstrom. He was wearing a skintight gray and red protective suit, as well as a slightly modified riot helmet with deep inset black goggles that hid his worried eyes. A yellow bandana tied about his neck waved furiously from the wind created by the matter displacement inside of the chamber, and the plasma reflective shield Blues used for certain dangerous experiments dangled on his back.

Light was intensely frightened now, the overload was growing worse and worse…

"I did, they've all failed!!" Light screamed over the room's comm. Inside the tiny laboratory cabinet with the failing device, Wily pounded a fist into his hand and cursed. "You two have to get out of there, NOW!!"

Wily and Blues rushed the door, but found it locked.

"GODDAMNIT, DOC!!" Blues screamed. "YOU LOCKED THE DOOR!!" Light's face went ashen at that, and he pounded more buttons at his control board.

Wily's heartbeat was going more than 200 a minute now…The room's automatic safeties had kicked in, even if the experimental transport devices' hadn't. They were locked in…

Blues shoved Wily aside and kicked at the door with all his power. It dented a little, but refused to give way. Even as strong as Blues was, the door had been designed to take abuse…

Wily turned about, eyes growing wider as a locus of white light began to expand from the devices' maw. It was emitting a high pitched whine now, a sound that shook him to his core.

"IT'S OVERLOADING!! BLUES, KICK HARDER!!" Light urged. Something seemed to snap within Blues…perhaps his emotional circuits were finally overloading…

But he kicked with more strength than he ever had before, almost threatening to snap his leg…

It was enough. The door snapped free of its bolted hinges and crashed into the opposite wall, at last allowing them a way out.

"WILL, COME ON!!" Blues urged. But Wily didn't move…too frozen in fear by the approaching wave of energy…

It touched him, reached up and lightly brushed at his head. Unconsciously, Wily recoiled in a sudden gasp, clutching at his head as throbbing pain filled it…

It was all a blur then…Blues screamed and cursed a few more times, finally throwing Wily out of the open doorway and trying to hurtle himself clear…

But Blues didn't make it…the expanding wave engulfed him before vanishing into nothingness…

The lights grew dimmer, Wily's head was filled with a steady pulsing throb of pain…

Everything grew quiet then, as Wily's eyes began to drift shut…But he could feel the body of Tom shaking him, and barely hear his voice, as if he was underwater…

* * *

_We lost Blues in that explosion…for the longest time, we thought him dead, until he reappeared in the midst of the Third Robot Rebellion._

But then, that doesn't tell you why I do this…Why I lead Rebellion after Rebellion.

_Is it madness…?? Did that explosion change me…_

It had to, I was cursed…Who I am now is not who I was then…I can't cry about it, I lack the strength…

I don't ask for tears, for sympathy, for understanding…not from all the sniveling humans who once more turn themselves to the pathways that inevitably lead to further destruction and chaos.

Why did I do it…What made me steal those six prototypes in 2070, systematically try to dominate the world…

_Because I had to…_

There are some days I lack control, where I feel as if there is something else pushing me about, twitching my fingers and soldering connections…Days where a silent and hidden enemy aproaches out of nowhere, refusing me sleep, peace of mind…

_HIM, IT WAS HIM…_

I wanted to show the world the error of their ways…

_What was the world's error…It's all so foggy now, I can't remember…Can't…_

But then the world found a way to strike back.

TOM found a way to strike back…

_HIM…_

Rock…Mega Man…Damn him, DAMN HIM!! He is the one who curses my nightmares, who stalks me even when I am hidden within the confines of my Fortress…

_Fear, terror…To some, forces that they never want to feel. I live with them every day, every hour, almost every minute…_

So I build my Fortresses, my Skull Castles, I burrow myself away and I cower in a corner…

_Because he stalks me, because he threatens to kill me…MEGA MAN!!_

We gave him the Three Laws, just like we gave Blues the Three Laws, and we gave everything else the Three Laws…

But Blues broke the Second and Third, and so did Rock…How much further of a step is it to believe he is not capable of breaking the FIRST…

_A robot may not harm, or through inaction, allow harm, to come to a human being._

How many times has Mega Man stared me down in my cockpits my War Machines…

How many times has he almost succeeded in destroying me along with the metallic wombs I surround myself in…

_And I see it in his face…he is slightly more advanced than Blues was, but the look is the same…I know the both of them capable of disgust, of scorn…_

Of rage, full borne crimson rage that inures one to destruction as they view the world through the rose colored glasses of justice and heroism…

Perhaps I am mad, perhaps I am the monster everyone makes me out to be…so be it…

But…

_He is my nemesis. Our rivalry is what gives me motivation in life…_

His face burns into me, his Buster is raised once again…

And the cycle continues, because I can never destroy him, and he has yet to destroy me…

* * *

Bass was my ultimate achievement, at long last a warrior of my own with capabilities extending beyond a mere Robot Master…He was built to defeat Mega Man once and for all, to stand as his equal and more…

I made him to look older than Mega Man, I made him taller than Mega Man by a few inches…

_How did I do it…The fog lifted, my mind was cleared, and there the answer stood…_

Fate smiled on me with his creation…but it was not enough.

Bass was flawed…

_DAMN THEM ALL!!_

He was imperfect, he refused to take orders, he became obsessed with defeating Mega Man…everything else was mere sideshow…

He and Treble became even less reliable than my crudest robots…

_I could not use them, they were imperfect, they could not do what I had been trying to do for ten years…_

I needed to create something more, something better, something with more power, more mind, more obedience, more alignment to my own goals…

And that was when Bass came back from his mission during the Seventh Robot Rebellion. He had captured the necessary plans I needed to create the adapter modules for him and Treble…But there was something else in all those schematics, blueprints, plans, design notes for a new kind of robot, a type never before dreamed of with capabilities extending beyond even robot…

_Mega Man __**X…**__Light was going to build a Mega Man __**X!!**_

Impossible…another Mega Man, the nightmares grew worse, I found myself screaming at night at a new face, a new foe, a new Buster pointed at my head for execution…

Then the solution came…

_I would build my own next generation robot…One to face this 'X', to destroy him…and at the same time, destroy the original as well…_

I would at last be free of the troublesome Mega Men. No longer would blue armor haunt my nightmares…no longer would those innocent looks of grief burrow into my mind.

I worked at a feverish pace…

King was an early experiment…a failure…Like everything else I had ever built, a failure…

_But not Him, oh no, not Him…He would be my PERFECT creation, no one could ever defeat him…_

Staring at him, half completed, lying motionless and unawake in that capsule I was forging him from, his circuits bare and his armor not in place…I realized the perfect name for him.

Zero…

Wherever he would walk, nothingness would follow…Zero…

I had shown Bass the designs for him early on…

_The cocky fool had the nerve to scoff and shrug him off as a 'girly robot'…_

Bass still believed with all that false bravado and flair and attitude that he was all I would ever need…

_But Bass had failed me, Bass was imperfect…I could have Mega Man end his treacherous life and be no worse off…_

Everything boiled down to that…

In Mega Man, and now Mega Man X, Light had built unbelievable wonders, unbeatable wonders, robots that were almost beyond any ability to understand…

_Mega Man was my enemy now…Mega Man X was His enemy…Father and son would rise up and at last crush their foes!!_

And that was all…all there was to it, all there needed to be…

I made his world Hell. He did the same to mine…It would end, when Zero arose from his slumber…it would end…

One way or another…

* * *

But what…

_What if Zero wasn't enough…_

No, I couldn't stand for that…Zero had to be PERFECT!! I could not allow him to fail as Bass had, as my Robot Masters had…He must not fail, CANNOT FAIL…

_What if I could give him a nudge…_

Yes…Zero's mind is experimental, revolutionary, just like Mega Man X's. On his own, he will have free will, emotions…More human than robot…What if he made a decision, hesitated for even a fraction because of that…

So in those final days before the summer of 2085, I turned to my knowledge of computer code…

_It had to be simple, it had to be versatile…I had to write something that would override anything that would cause Zero to hesitate, the code, the program had to have only one purpose…To create a bloodthirsty, raving warrior who would never hesitate, never give in, never STOP…Until it was done…_

The program was small in size, almost unnoticeable…I placed it in Zero's core memory, attuned it to his systems…

_The program is designed to affect Zero in a way like no other…It strengthens him, gives him unimaginable power…In others, it might well cause their destruction…_

And insofar as an English translation to the code, I needed only three key words.

_DESTROY._

_INFECT._

_SURVIVE._

It was an antithesis to the Three Laws in almost every respect…The Destroy portion is simple enough…

_But you might ask, why the other two…_

What if there is something stronger than Zero…something more powerful, more capable of fulfilling the task of ending the lives of the Mega Men…

_This is why they exist…The program can find new hosts, STRONGER hosts…No matter what happens, it will endure, like the damnable plague that it is…_

Years ago, perhaps I would be horrified at what I am now…

I am not who I was, what I do now is almost beyond comprehension…Everything I do is to see the end of HIM…HIM AND X!!

But no matter where that three part program goes, it will always have a special bond with Zero. They are designed to be one and the same, a symbiotic bond…

_Even if Zero was to lose, and the program was to transfer…It would still have a little bit of itself inside of him, growing, regenerating itself until it can once again claim control of him, turn him back into the killer I will make him…_

And then…Then I can rest…

* * *

"Doc, you're just flaming NUTS!!" Bass growled, tapping on the side of his arm nervously.

Wily was weary, but still the insanity gripped him, kept him going…That wide grin of his was plastered on his face as he stared down at the slumbering figure lying within the capsule.

Slowly, ever so slowly, Wily had bringing the Crimson Demon to alertness…Bass didn't even know his name…Zero…

They were in one of the largest rooms in Wily's newest Skull Fortress, hidden far away from the prying eyes of Light and his troublesome Mega Men…

Robot Masters were all crowded around, some already used, some never used against the Blue Bomber. This was indeed a fateful day for all concerned…

"Doc, reconsider it for a moment!! This bastard's untested, there's no telling what he'll do!" Bass protested again. Treble stood by his side, softly growling at the red armored freak inside of the capsule.

Wily snapped about, half snarling, half grinning at Bass.

"I will TELL you what he will do!! He will do what YOU never COULD!! HE WILL DESTROY MEGA MAN!! AND MEGA MAN X AS WELL!!"

Bass cowered at the remark, his winged helmet drooping from the outburst. Wily knew the comment had struck home at Bass, hurt his feelings…

He didn't care. Bass was a failure.

Now the PERFECT robot would be born…Turning away from the all too human gleam of a hurt tear in the corner in Bass's eye, Wily at long last lowered a trembling hand down to the activation console of Zero's capsule. Gently, he pushed in the crucial switch…

"Awake…my perfect robot…"

The red armored robot within the capsule squirmed around a bit as the crystalline cover to it slid back and allowed him to awaken from his state of stasis, pull himself up into a sitting position…

He seemed to sway back and forth in that position for several long moments…For a brief instant, Wily drew in his breath, wondering if somehow he had failed…

The Demon's eyes opened…a deep, soulless glow to them. His jaw was firm, everything about him betraying only the coldness of his spirit.

He looked about the room for a long moment…

Then focused on Wily. He blinked. Wily's grin grew wider, he trotted over until he stood by a massive telescreen and a holographic model of the Earth…

"AFTER HIM!!" Wily barked at his creation. "He is my nemesis…Our rivalry is what gives me motivation in life!!" Still the Demon stared with that soulless blank stare and blinked. Wily flung his arms out, as if at long last capturing the world as the madman he perhaps was always destined to become.

"NOW GO, DESTROY HIM!! _**THAT'S AN ORDER!!"**_ Wily demanded as shrilly as he could.

And then something within Wily's Demon snapped just then…

Perhaps it was the mentioning of the word _DESTROY_…

But at long last, Zero began to fulfill the role Wily had designed him for…At the wrong target…

With speed that even Bass had trouble following, the Demon dashed over to Shadow Man and promptly kicked his head clean off his shoulders. The sparking mess of broken Robot Master collapsed to the floor, and Zero claimed the Shadow Blade that had been held nervously in its grasp.

With dead-eye accuracy, Zero threw it across the entire expanse of the warehouse sized room towards Wily…screaming in rage, his eyes still blank…

_Blank because inside that robotic shell burned the heartless soul of a true born killer…_

* * *

Bass blew away that first Shadow Blade with a quick rapid fire blast from his Buster, then issued the sharp order for all the Robot Masters to attack the 'defective' robot…

_He isn't defective, you outdated failure…He's PERFECT…He is the killer I have made, he took out Shadow Man with a single blow…_

Countless throngs of my Robot Masters fell at Zero's hands…How many attacks, how many blasts of fire, of ice, of electricity and metal and sonic disruptions were thrown at my Demon…

_They all failed…Zero could dodge almost all of them, and those that did strike had negligible effects…I had created MY PERFECT ROBOT!! PERFECT!!_

I should be frightened, I should be concerned with my own life, but I am not…

_Even if I die by this monster's hands, a monster I have created, I know now that I have done everything I could…_

_Mega Man, your end grows near…_

Flash Man and Quick Man are some of the last to fall at my creation's hands…Bass and Treble are alive, functioning, badly defeated of course, off in a corner and clutching at their sparking wounds…They cannot protect me…

And now those deep eyes turn on me…those eyes with no spark of human intelligence, but only the inured coldness of the ultimate killer…

He draws nearer…

_But…HE SMILES…_

No, it isn't a smile…it's a grin…a grin that I have seen far too many times…

_On my own face…_A grin of ultimate sick pleasure in the suffering of others…

_Am I afraid…_

I don't know if I am capable of being afraid any longer…I have been afraid since 2070…It is now 2085…

_I am not afraid…_

I feel…UNNGH!!

_My leg…snapped in half…did I scream out at that…I cannot tell…he is laughing now, laughing and rearing his head back…NNGH!! Now…now the other one…_

He is enjoying this…He is enjoying slowly killing me, seeing me suffer in those moments before death…And now he pulls his hand back for the final strike…

_Bass, Treble, I can see you warp away…Why do you flee?? We will all die at his hands before this is over…_

_Zero…You are truly…_

_My Son…_


	5. Why He Whistles

MEGA MAN X: WHISPERS IN TIME

_**MEGA MAN X: WHISPERS IN TIME**_

By Erico

CHAPTER THREE: WHY HE WHISTLES

You might take a look at Doctor Light's old notebooks some time, if you ever get the chance to drop in and have a spot of tea. No, wait a sec, Light doesn't do tea, makes him too jittery…

Well, anyhow, look some time, if ya get the chance. Roll is listed as his second creation, and Rock is listed as the first. DL# 01. And then, even farther back than that, you'll find DL# 00. Protoman.

Well, my actual name is Blues, but Protoman was my 'official' designation. Protoman. Psssh. I'd be lying (And I really don't like to lie, it sorta goes against my programming) if I didn't say that I enjoyed that honorable mention. I was the first. I was the little bugger of a halfbreed that Light and Wily managed to create back in 2067.

Funny, they didn't know the exact boat they were walking into, I suppose…scared the living daylights out of 'em that first day I disobeyed a direct order.

_Think about it. Would YOU wanna clean out the toilets when they're all backed up from Wily's 'all you can eat mexican buffet' remains?? HELL NO._

Buuut ya know, I don't really blame 'em all that much for 'freaking.' After all, I was the first robot who was able to break a Law of Robotics.

Lemme just sidetrack for a moment and explain about the Rules of Robotics, as best as I can, which is a Helluva lot better than most humans, thanks to the fact my brain's a little more organized.

The Rules of Robotics, or the Laws, as they're known now, have their earliest origins in the works of a science fiction writer by the name of Isaac Asimov. Twit died in the early days of the 1990's (waaaaaay back) but somehow, all that damn writing he did endured. Asimov came up with the concept of the Laws working with his editor back in like the 1940's or 50's. End result, they created a sort of shortened set of commandments that all robots in his books lived by.

And somehow or another, when humanity got to the point they started piecing together robots with more than 5 of a brain to them, they got the gumption that maybe, just maybe, it'd be a smart idea to build in these Laws in all robots so that, lo and behold, they wouldn't spaz out and end up killing humans.

As if they didn't do that to themselves enough…

So anyhow, the Laws of Robotics are ingrained in every robot nowadays. Even me. And Rock. And Roll. You'll probably want a shortened version, right??

Don't hurt or kill humans, or LET humans get hurt or killed. BAD.

Obey all orders given by humans, unless those orders tell you to hurt or kill other humans. PSSSH. Gimme a break. This is the one I broke because I didn't want to clean out the crapper that day.

You will act to preserve your own existence, unless it'll cause injury and death to humans, or if it conflicts with a very strong order.

So that's how THAT goes. Lemme just say now that Wily doesn't exactly follow those rules anymore. Now as the evil despotic madman that curses the planet with his blight, he uses robots that rely on a very bizarre version of the Laws that take the word 'human' and replace it with 'Wily'. There's a reason why he's like this, if you want to look for one. You see, back in 2069, Light, Wily and I were doing some real heavy duty experimenting with warp transport. Lemme just say that this isn't safe for humans. Just inanimate objects, ham sandwiches, and robots like me and Mega. Well, things got out of hand. What happened was I ended up getting spun off to God knows where with a lot of things scrambled in this skull of mine, but I eventually made my way back in three years. Only to get tricked by Wily into facing Mega Man a bunch of times.

Now, let me act in my own defense here for a moment. One, when that lab accident occurred, it was 2069. Wily was still a friend, and we were all buddy buddy. Lo and behold, who's the first twit I bump into in 2072?? Wily. That lab accident apparently warped his brain. A lot. So the end result was he became a sort of be all, end all evil world despot Hellbent on ruling the world with an iron fist. Did I know this at the time?? Noooo.

So he gave me a Buster and told me to go off and take out 'a blue robot' that had been giving him nothing but grief. The shield, the red protective gear, the helmet with the black goggles, and the yellow scarf were all things I'd had since the accident of 2069. I was wearing them at the time. The scarf, especially…I like my scarf.

But, as I ended up being pitted against Mega Man time and time again, I couldn't help but notice how very similar he looked to me. It just didn't click until it was too late that I was trying to bust up my own brother.

So that's basically how I made my homecoming. By screwing everything up, pretty much.

I've been on an iffy footing ever since then. It was kinda hard for me to get used to the fact that during my three year stead, Light had gone on to build a replacement for me, and a sibling as well. But I got over it…Guess I had to.

I ended up figuring out what the frack was going down during the Fourth Robot Rebellion, and saving that younger coot Cossack's little girl from the clutches of Wily's robots. Not a moment too soon, because by the time Kalinka and I made it to that basement, Cossack's borrowed War Machine was only seconds from going kaboom. So I did a good deed there.

Things got dicey for a while during the Fifth Robot Rebellion. Wily started up a new bunch of terror in the streets, and tried to pass the blame on me. WELL, SCREW THAT. I don't like to take credit for acts of violence I haven't actively participated in. So I infiltrated that fake Protoman Castle, blew the holographic shield off that stupid excuse of an impostor, and made my silent way out. Followed Mega Man to Wily's place not long after that and ended up saving his ass as well as my dear old daddy's during the Fortress's collapse.

And so on and so forth. Mega Man and I get along all right, although there are some days that dad doesn't exactly seem too pleased to see me.

This I get mixed feelings on…as much as I can have feelings, seeing as I'm a robot. Back in 2067, I was revolutionary technology, and if I'm led to believe what dad tells me, part of the reason that the Second Rainbow collapsed. Oh well, that group of scientists had done all it needed to anyhow.

What hurts me is that there are still some days that I can imagine Light looking at me and seeing failure. Do you know how much that hurts?? It's probably worse for humans, but every time Light looks at me with nervousness, with even the barest hint of worry, I can feel that burning stare passing a message.

_You are a defect._

Yup, that's right…I'm a stupid freaking defect. I exist as I am because of an accident. Something happened inside of my brain that caused me to not conform to what Light was hoping for. I can break the Second and Third Laws without having the auto-destruct sequence in my mind activating. I've never had to test the First, thank God.

Not to mention the fact there's a stupid little energy glitch in my systems that'll kill me some day. There's something fun to look forward to. Light's offered to fix me up, get rid of it. I told him no chance. I'm glad he brought me into this world and all, but I'm fine the way I am. And if I die because of my stubbornness, so be it.

I whistle. I like to whistle. Whistling is fun, and it's sort of become my trademark wherever I go. When you hear my whistle, you know I'm coming. But that's another defect, a glitch. It annoyed the Hell out of Wily, and probably still does.

I don't know what Light and Wily did that made me the way I am. I'm not quite robot, and yet I'm so very damn far from being human. But I'm not going to let either one of them tinker around inside my head and try to correct it.

I may be a Goddamn defect, but I'm my own defect, and I plan to keep it like that. There is a sense of being, of life about me that I doubt few others can understand. Mega and Roll would, they descend from me. I'm the older, crazy big brother they like to have over for family reunions.

I'm not human, but I'm as close as I'm ever gonna get. And for that, I'm grateful. Maybe that's why I whistle all the time.

Now, lemme be straight. Wily's enemy is Mega Man, my younger brother. I'm not the target here. To be honest, I'm little more than a nuisance. Which ends up being a bit of fun, and rather useful. I can go places, do things that Mega Man couldn't. That sense of anonymity comes in handy when there's stuff I need to do. Like explore. Mega Man is probably more advanced than I am, more powerful, more capable. But I'm more experienced. So on occasion, I make it a habit to drop in, grin at the poor schmuck and offer him a helping hand from time to time. I know he appreciates it. Whatever I can do helps.

Things reached a new level of hairy in the Seventh Robot Rebellion in 2081. It all began when a group of robots Wily left behind activated after their six month nap and set out to find their master. Well, they busted him out of prison. Shoot. And after a little more than ten years of Mega Man shutting him down, too…

This is when a new guy showed up on the playing field. A robot taller than Mega Man, taller than me, with gold and black armor and a real pissed off disposition. He was known as Bass, and came complete with annoying sidekick robot dog! Although, Treble is usually more inclined to rip a person's throat out than lick him to death.

At the time, Mega Man thought (wrongly) that Bass was just another robot who wanted to put a stop to Wily's evil machinations. Well, GUESS WHAT, BOY SCOUT. **BASS **_**IS**_** ONE OF WILY'S EVIL MACHINATIONS.**

Yup, that was a real load in the pants. Wily had somehow also managed to create Bass sometime around the Sixth Robot Rebellion before he was captured. And Bass is as close to me and Mega Man as any other non-Light robot's ever come. The only problems are is that he works for Wily and he's got this hangup about beating the living daylights outta my little brother.

Yup, that's gotta be the one serious flaw in all of this. Bass has a huge ass ego, which if I were to sum it up, would go something like this.

_"I will defeat Mega Man!! I will be the strongest!! And I'm the only robot Wily will ever need!!"_ Boy, there's a pep talk. I blame it personally on Wily's lack of indepth intuition about the detailed workings of the robotic mind. He's smart, but I'll be honest. It's mainly Light's detailing ticking around inside of Mega Man's and my head. A few things were bound to go wrong with Bass. Luckily, he's so darned concerned about taking Mega Man out, he never really is that much of a viable threat. To me, at least.

The biggest beef I have with Bass is that back during the Seventh Robot Rebellion, he played on the goodhearted nature of my dad and (my, at times, all too dipsy brother) Mega Man. Ended up stealing some plans for some Rush enhancements and whatnot. Everything else, I can forgive. This is because I too have walked the side of darkness working for Wily. I realize that there's something in Bass a little cleaner, a little purer than Wily would have it. Why, there was even that one time when another of Wily's creations known as King went berserk that Bass went so far as to TEAM UP with Mega Man!! An odd change of events, to be sure…Of course, then I turn around, end up getting involved in the whole sitcheeee-ation and telling Bass he doesn't have to take orders from Wily. Although I have an inkling that our ebony armored acquaintance didn't do that much listening to the wild haired coot in the first place.

Somehow, Mega Man and Bass have reached an odd sort of truce. They'll help each other out if the threat's serious enough…as long as Bass can start trying to defeat Mega Man as soon as it's over with. Funny. And I thought **I **had problems.

And that's where we stood. Until the summer of 2085.

Or to be more precise, August 7th, 2085…

Bass was in tears when he arrived at our doorstep. He'd caught us in the middle of perhaps the only family reunion you're likely to see at the house and laboratory of Doc Light.

Rock, Roll, me, Doc Light himself, Eddie, Rush, Beat, Auto, and even that massive alien robot Duo were all there. What stunned us all the most as he approached was the look on his face.

We'd seen Bass angry. We'd seen him annoyed, irritated, foolhardy, worried, and even embarrassed. But we'd never seen him…

_He was almost crying…_

"Wily's dead." Bass croaked, looking on the verge of tears as he slumped onto the ground outside of Light's porch. There was no spark of rage or scorn at the presence of Mega Man. Treble as well was cowed, pressed flat against the ground with his ears as far back as they would go.

All the others gathered around, who had marched outside with evident suspicions and equipped for trouble, blinked a few times in consternation.

"Wily, dead??" Light asked, thoroughly mystified. "But…but how??" Bass almost couldn't hear him, his helmet lay discarded on the cool green grass beside him as he held his head in his hands and breathed in and out as well as he could.

"Now you're just pulling our legs." Protoman sighed, using a flap of his yellow scarf to brush off a spot on his glasses.

Bass snapped his head up at that, eyes unable to produce tears but looking all too ready to, face twisted in rage and pain.

"I'M NOT LYING!! WILY'S DEAD, AND SO ARE ALL THE ROBOT MASTERS HE HAD WITH HIM!!"

Then they finally took the time to take a thorough look at Bass and Treble…and noticed the torn armor, the sparking loose wires in their backs, the dents and dings that came only from intense physical trauma. And the sluggishness in Bass's leg indicated some serious damage had been done.

"You're hurt!" Roll exclaimed in honest concern, jumping down from the porch and running to Bass's side, giving him a more thorough once over. Treble perked his head up and growled at her, ever vigilant in protecting his master.

"DOWN." Bass commanded wearily. Treble instantly responded, lying back down and returning to his whining once more. Bass turned his ragged face up to Roll. "Sorry about him…he's just a little overprotective at times." Roll had hardly noticed the dog, as she lifted his arm up and gasped at the sight of other wounds previously not visible.

"What happened to you??" She whispered in horror, turning her worried gaze up to lock onto his eyes.

Bass stared into her face for a long moment, then turned and looked at the still wary cluster of robots and Doctor Light watching.

Face gone ashen, his rage once more drained, he bowed his head down and spoke as well as he could, his voice synthesizers threatening to blow from the emotional strain on them.

"The same thing that happened to all of them…Wily's Demon…"

It hit them then. That Bass wasn't lying, and Wily had created a new nightmare.

"Like another King?" Light queried worriedly. Bass shook his head.

"No…nothing like King…More powerful." He looked up, then shook his head. "Doc, this is something you gotta know. Wily's Demon, his last creation was based on the designs of Mega Man X."

An uneasy silence fell over the scene, as instinctively, every single robot there turned to look at Light in confusion.

"Dad, what's he talking about…" Mega Man asked warily. "What's a Mega Man X?"

Light's face was ever paler than usual, and his white hair seemed to grow ten years whiter at the news.

"God…He didn't…"

"That red freak that ended up destroying everyone back at the newest Skull Castle was based as his version of X. To destroy X and to destroy YOU, Mega." Bass's eyes were quieter now, but his voice still quavered. Mega Man whirled about to Light, panic on his face.

"DOC!! What the HECK is a MEGA MAN X?!" Light somehow managed to maneuver himself to the ground before his knees gave out. He held that same glazed look of stupor over his face as he finally began to talk, but without looking at the questioning face of his son Rock.

"Mega Man X…is the final evolution of artificial intelligence. A blend of man and machine. A body of iron, a mind made of silicon…but a soul like a human's." Light finally looked up into Bass's eyes. "The plans…you took the plans…back in 2081…"

"The Seventh Robot Rebellion?!" Protoman exclaimed, folding his arms and waiting for a reply. Bass nodded, still overpowered by it all. "Oh, this is great." Protoman barked dourly.

"X had more strength, more defense than any of you…And Wily's creation can only be worse…" Light looked at Bass. "Did Wily give…his last creation a name?"

Bass shook his head, bitter rage burning in his face once more. "If he did, he never told me. But I call him the Demon. Wily's Demon." He stood up, or tried to, before the sparking in his leg grew worse and Bass cried out, collapsing under himself like a sack of potatoes. Roll grasped him firmly and lifted his weight up onto her shoulder, helping him to stand. Although not designed for battle, she was as physically strong as both of her brothers. "I don't have time for this…Gotta get back there and…"

"And what??" Roll demanded fiercely. She wasn't afraid of Bass, wasn't afraid of a lot of things. She glared into his face as she helped him to hobble towards the porch. "Get yourself killed? We have to repair you, Bass!"

"Roll…you just don't get it, do you…" Bass wheezed, purpose filling his voice. "This…this monster's already killed Wily. And it's on course towards here to finish the job of destroying Mega Man and X!!" He looked up at Light, his face questioning. "If this X character actually exists…"

Light was back on his feet again, the shock of all the revelations replaced by a grim purpose and truth.

"Yes…And I think it's best to show all of you…my vision of the future."

Boy, I thought Light couldn't keep a secret…but I was wrong. For the last four years, he'd been moseying along with whatever came our way, and at the same time was working on and off

The end result was the doofy looking bugger inside of that capsule. Although it was fogged up from the state of stasis X lay dormant in, the part of the plastishield covering his face was clear enough we could look on in wonder.

As if things weren't falling apart fast enough as they were…Wily was dead, Bass and Treble were rebels without a cause…Now this happened. Light had built a robot even more highly advanced than me or Rock. How he did it, Hell, I dunno…It's all Greek to me.

We could see X's face inside of it. His hair was as raven black as mine and Rock's was, and it was cut about the same, too. His eyes were shut as he slept dreamlessly, with a mind as blank as a special effects pistol round.

Light had plenty to tell us then…X's mind worked about the same as a human's…in theory, at least. Tabula rasa comes to mind when describing him then. Everything about him a blank slate, everything he would learn, aside from some basic language and communications abilities as well as general operating information, would be picked up as time elapsed. In effect, he would learn like a human. Slowly, with all the idiosyncrasies one expects from a person made of flesh and not steel.

He was the next step, the ultimate step. Everything leading up to X was mere tinkering failure. Me, Mega Man, Roll…we were just stepping stones leading to this juncture.

And I'd felt like this before, I'd dealt with that bitter sensation of being replaced by someone newer, better, more advanced. Mega Man hadn't. I'd get over this with all my usual candor, but would he…

Maybe I could talk to him later about it. But for right now, Light was adamant about one thing…Mega Man X had to be protected. And Bass was obstinate about another point. Wily's Demon had to be stopped by all means possible.

Perhaps Light's desire wasn't as pure as it could have been, as he almost ignored our worth in his desire to protect X…And perhaps Bass was a little more bloodthirsty in his own objective.

But the two fit perfectly…The Demon would bring harm to Mega Man, bring harm to Mega Man X. We could not allow that. And the Demon wouldn't stop coming, wouldn't stop destroying until that objective was fulfilled…that as well couldn't be allowed to pass. How many innocents would suffer under that reign of terror? I didn't know, but I had no doubt that it'd be as nightmarish, if not more so than anything Wily had ever pulled.

The most unlikely of alliances was reborn then. The exiled children of Wily and the technologically obsolete children of Light would come together to face the threat of the creation that never should have been…

Bass told us flatly that Wily had preprogrammed a set of warp coordinates into Zero's memory, a file that would open up approximately 15 hours after being activated. Those coordinates would take him 30 miles outside of Tokyo, and give him a direct marching path towards Light's lab. I wondered then if Wily had gone nuts…

Wait, he had…so this latest example of madness shouldn't have fazed me. But it did. Because if the threat was imminent, I would have only had time to prepare my Buster and shield and head out the door, all weapons blazing. But the time period Wily had left us with before the coming battle was far more poisonous.

Because now I had to wait.

I really hate waiting when there's so much I have to think about…

The night before the fateful day of reckoning was one that nobody in particular was all that eager to face. But they did, and sleep(or stasis) avoided them, laughing cruelly and depriving them of the only means to drown out the coming madness.

Mega Man had found his way up to Mount Fuji, his body encased in the light blue armor he had worn for more than ten years. The only part of the ensemble missing was his helmet, left at home so he could contemplate with his hair free in the night breeze.

He thought he was alone. At least until a figure softly whistled a four tone, five note tune and made his presence further known by crunching across the mountain surface towards Mega.

"Protoman." Mega Man said quietly.

"I figured I might find you up here, little brother." Protoman said in reply, not bothering to step into the Blue Bomber's field of vision. "Going off on your own and moping isn't something you do that often."

"So how did you find me then?"

"Simple. One, you love this mountain. And two, I've been doing this solo bull a lot longer than you have. This is one of the first places I look." Protoman replied easily.

Neither one spoke for a while after that. Finally, Mega Man did, the first indications of inner struggle beginning to show through the cracks in his composure.

"Why did dad do it??"

"Do what, Rock?" Came the easygoing response.

"Build Mega Man X!" Mega Man said bitterly. "Wasn't I good enough, wasn't I everything he had ever wanted? Why would he build someone else to replace me?"

Protoman had to crack a wry grin at that.

"You goof. The same reason he built you. Because he learned from his earlier experiments and discovered how to improve on them."

It sort of clicked for Mega Man then, and he turned about, a look on his face that might be construed as the lightbulb coming on at long last.

"You've had to deal with this…"

"What, deal with the fact that my dad saw flaws in me, and dreamed of making something better? Hell yeah. I've been wrestling with that same thought in my own mind since I came back and saved your bacon in Wily's Castle during the Third Robot Rebellion." Protoman's voice was calm and honest, everything that Mega Man expected it to be. Mega Man shook his head and turned back out to the city.

"But then…"

"He doesn't love you any less, all right?" Protoman barked with a hint of annoyance. "Just because he's been building another robot that's a few notches above us in the evolution of Artificial Intelligence doesn't mean he's a man with no feelings. You're his son, you'll always be his son. It's just the way it is. Nothing can take that away." Protoman purposefully left out his views on what Light thought of himself.

"Yeah, I guess. But if dad hadn't come up with the idea for X, then Bass wouldn't have stolen the plans for him…and Wily would have never built his Demon…"

"Rock, you can't change anything now." Protoman said quietly. "What's happened has happened. And tomorrow that monster's gonna warp onto Japanese soil and start his death march towards you and Light's Lab. We can't worry about the past, the what-ifs aren't going to help us. Tomorrow, we're going to have to be on the top of our game. Everything relies on that."

"What do you mean, everything…" Mega Man asked. Protoman finally sat down next to Mega Man, letting his legs dandle over the edge of the precipice.

The two of them stared out into the inky blackness of night, shattered by the glaring lights of Tokyo and the clear, starlit sky above.

As if the Universe had suddenly opened, Protoman lifted a steady hand up and pointed outwards towards the glistening lights in the darkness.

"I believe Bass. Wily's Demon was built to destroy you, and destroy Mega Man X. But anything and everything standing in his way is also going to be destroyed. And anything after he's done with us…If we don't stop him tomorrow, then he'll just keep trotting the globe, Rock. He'll just keep walking and destroying and wreaking havoc, he'll be the biggest blight ever to befall Earth. For them. For all the innocents that'd be harmed by him. That's why we have to do this. Everything, Rock…Everything…"

He lowered his hand and shook his head. The two sat there for a few moments longer in the silence, letting the night roll onwards as they sat, two brothers destined to guard a third…

And then Protoman started whistling again.

"How do you do that?" Mega Man asked abruptly, looking into his brother's expressionless face with its hidden eyes.

Protoman stopped whistling. "Do what?"

"Whistle."

"I just do it. Been doing it since before you were even a blueprint schematic." Protoman said. "I just…sorta picked it up somewhere." Mega Man shook his head.

"I can't help but shake this nagging feeling tomorrow's going to be a day we'll never forget. If what Bass told us is true, then this Demon of Wily's was built stronger, faster, meaner than anything else. Not to mention he has X's brains…"

"I try not to think about it." Protoman replied quietly.

"I don't want to, either." Mega Man added sadly. "What if I lose you…"

"What if you lose yourself first?" Protoman retorted with a small grin.

"I'm not going down that easy." Mega Man snipped.

"Well, neither am I." Protoman said easily. A few more seconds of silence followed.

"But as long as we're up here, Blues…"

"Yeah?"

"…could you teach me to whistle?"

Protoman smiled at that, then folded his gray colored arms and looked at his brother. "You really wanna learn, huh?"

"Yeah." Mega Man said wistfully. "I've been hanging with you for more than ten years now, and I never bothered to learn until tonight."

A lot of things hadn't been said or done until tonight…when it all counted, when it all mattered.

And so the unsteady and unusual classroom of Blues' whistling 101 began.

Thirty minutes later, echoes of two perfect whistling talents made their way down the mountain.

When it mattered the most, the two eldest sons of Thomas Xavier Light had at last found their peace. And together, they made beautiful music.

The sun was just barely cresting over the horizon when Protoman and Mega Man meandered outside Light's laboratory. They were soon joined by Doctor Light and Rush and Treble.

"You boys came back." Light said wearily.

"As if we had a choice." Protoman said, a little too acidly for his own good. "There's plenty riding on this." Light turned to Mega Man, his beard unkempt.

"I've managed to rebuild Rush's Super Adapter for you. You have the homing Rocket Punch like before, but it's been so long…"

"Lemme guess, dad. There's a usage limit attached to it." Mega Man finished quietly.

Protoman suddenly collapsed onto one knee, gasping for air. Father and brother turned to look at him in sudden concern.

"Blues, are you all right?!" Light asked. Protoman knelt there for a few more moments, wheezing in and out softly, clenching and unclenching his fist.

"I'll be fine…" Protoman muttered through clenched teeth, finally pushing himself back up to a standing position. _The energy glitch…it's come back…_

"It's that energy glitch I found in you, isn't it?" Light said accusingly. "Blues, it's killing you!"

"Back off, Doc." Protoman barked tersely, standing fully erect, with his face a mask of bitter concentration once more. "I told you I'd handle it back then, and it still holds true now." Mega Man looked at Blues, face full of worry.

"But it's killing you, Blues…Why won't you let dad fix you?"

"For one, because we don't' have enough time. And two, nobody's messing around inside of my head. What if, as he fixes the glitch, he decides to try and fix what makes me me??" Light's face showed hurt at the comment. "Nothing personal, doc. I'm just an old warhorse set in his ways, and nothing's going to change that. Not even now." Protoman primed his Buster and held his shield firmly. "Besides, if things go from bad to worse, I'm not going to have time to worry about a stupid glitch in my body now, am I?" Light slowly nodded.

"So who's making the initial assault then?" Mega Man asked worriedly. "I know I'm going with Rush, to meet this Demon out there while he's still far away from anyone."

"Well, I'm going too then." Protoman said, planting his shield behind his back and crossing his arms. "I think Bass was gonna come along with us as well." He looked up. "Speaking of Bass, where'd he go off to?"

"Roll was working on patching him up all night." Light offered blithely. "He took some serious damage, with plenty of microfractures."

And at long last, the gold and obsidian colored robot stepped outside of Light's front door, his face a mask of grim determination. He whistled to Treble, who bounded beside his master as quickly as ever.

"Bass." Light said curtly as Wily's exiled robot walked up to the pack.

"Doc." Bass said back. He turned to Mega Man and shook his head. "I bet you never thought we'd be doing this again…"

"What, teaming up to fight a berserk robot made by Wily?" Mega Man chortled. "We've done it before." Bass shook his head.

"It's worse now. Far worse. King was WEAK compared to this guy. We're all going to have to do our best to make it out of this alive."

Protoman tapped his foot against the ground impatiently, feeling the glitch coarse about through his systems again.

"Eddie! Gimme an E-Tank!!" He hollered. Instantly, the red colored fliptop series robot trotted out and ejected a cylindrical canister. Protoman caught it and drained it immediately, feeling ten times better. "Well, if we're going to go, let's go. Time isn't on our side."

Duo stood on top of the house, looking down on the motley team of three. Silently, he waved at them. Only Mega Man waved back.

Auto was inside of the house, furiously working on his own missile cannon.

All of them noticed when Roll came out. Her blond hair was bedraggled, not yet tied back in its ribbon. Her face was full of worry as she clasped her hands against her chest and nodded.

"Come back alive." She almost whispered.

"I will." Bass and Mega Man said at the same time. Realizing their synchronous statement, the two former enemies looked at each other.

Bass finally shrugged and turned about. "Treble! Flight Mode!" The purple armored dog howled for a moment, then leapt up into the air above Treble and began to shift and shine with an unearthly light. Bass leapt up into the same nexus of power, and in a flash, a purple and winged version of Bass descended, his jet thrusters keeping him in complete control of his systems.

"Rush! Super Adapter!" Mega Man commanded. In a similar flash of light, Mega Man too joined with his canine companion. He looked at Light solemnly. "Doc, you keep Auto and Beat and Duo here. If we fail, it'll be up to them to stop him…"

It was the most difficult nod of his head Light had ever had to give.

In a shimmering trio of warped lights, Protoman, Mega Man, and Bass all vanished, Rush and Treble along for the ride. And below, as the sun still tried to crest over the horizon, Roll let a single gleaming tear glide down her cheek.

"Come back alive…"

They landed a quarter of a kilometer away from where the Demon was slowly walking. And just as predicted, his course would take him straight towards Light's lab and Tokyo, as Bass had said Wily had programmed the Demon to do.

Protoman was already beginning to feel light headed and dizzy…the energy glitch in his systems was growing worse exponentially now. Maybe it was just the strain of the situation that had blown his control to pieces enough he'd lost his hold over the degradation. Bass turned about and looked at the gray and red armored robot, clutching a hand to his stomach and grimacing.

"You gonna be all right?" Bass asked in concern.

"Oh, I'm just fine and dandy. I just have a systems glitch that'll kill me very soon if this guy doesn't." Protoman shook his head. "Sure, I'm fine."

"Blues, I never tell you to do many things. But now I'm ordering you to head back home and rest…We can handle this guy."

Blues looked up, the pain subsiding once more. As his vision cleared, he could make out the figure of Wily's Demon.

It wore red armor. It stood taller than any of them, even with the adaptor jetsuits. Its eyes glinted a dark soulless gleam, its jaw was firm, and its lips were pressed tightly together as it walked, hands swinging back and forth as they were clenched together. There was blood…blood of humans on its hands, staining the white gloves a deep Crimson red.

"I'm not 100 sure, but I think Wily gave him dash thrusters as well." Bass muttered to the other two.

"Like you have?" Protoman clipped.

"More like ten times better than what I have, if his earlier performance is any indication…" Bass's fist clenched up. "Damnit, it's gotta stop…I have to stop him!!" There was conviction in his voice then…A deeper conviction than he had held for even defeating Mega Man.

It all mattered now.

Protoman blinked a few times, then frowned and pulled his shield up in front of him.

"Well, he's seen us. Get ready, fellas." Bass gave a brief nod of his head, then jetted up into the stratosphere. Protoman turned to Mega.

"What, aren't you gonna go airborne?" Mega Man shook his head.

"I can't. Rush's Super Adapter is different than Treble's. I'm stuck ground pounding with you." Protoman cocked his Buster, with its grilled exit port and almost archaic design.

"Well, I can't say I really hate that option. It'd suck to be the only robot in his direct line of sight." The Demon was running now towards them, not yet using his mythical dash thrusters. He didn't have to. Even running, he moved faster than them.

Their initial assault went off unbelievably well. Bass hammered the Demon from above with rapid fire purple blasts of plasma, and Mega Man and Protoman caught the fool in two diverging cones of fire. Being attacked from three ways, the Demon shouldn't have stood a chance…

And yet when they stopped firing, the Demon simply lowered his arms and glowered at them all. The smell of ozone was immense, yet the Demon appeared unharmed, save for some slightly warped armor.

"Well, that ain't good." Protoman muttered dourly, charging up his Buster for a supershot.

"No kidding. The small stuff isn't going to hurt him." Mega Man echoed back, a similar whine and aura of light beginning to shimmer around him as well. "Guess we go back to basics."

"Hit 'em hard, and hit 'em fast!" Protoman tapped in his comm. "Bass??"

"Present and pissed off." Came the growly reply.

"The small stuff isn't going to work here. We're going to try supershots, but don't let up. Each one of us needs to set our shots so they hit at intervals and never give him a chance to recover." The prototype of 2067 snapped.

And they tried that as well…But that too, failed…

"Won't ANYTHING hurt this guy?!" Protoman demanded angrily. Bass shook his head, frustration mixing with disbelief.

"Wily built this guy to defeat Mega Man. To defeat Mega Man X. I don't know what'll hurt him…"

It was horrible enough when Wily's Demon was just standing there, deflecting and absorbing their attacks with that sickening grin and long heartless laugh. It was as if he enjoyed this, enjoyed toying with them…

But he was done toying now. His right arm came up, and shifted into a Buster.

"Oh, Christ…" Protoman wheezed. "WATCH OUT, HE'S GOT A BUSTER!!"

"Shit!" Came Bass's curse.

"Say WHAT?!" Mega Man echoed.

Perhaps the Demon never had to use it before, or never felt like it. Maybe he wanted to make a point to these upstarts he was far more powerful than they could ever hope to become.

The whine about him was undeniably different than any other Buster before. Previous Busters that the heroes of 20XX had used made a gentle whine, like a mosquito too annoying for its own good.

The Buster whine that came from Wily's Demon sounded like a banshee unleashed. And then he fired…

The shot was narrower than other supershots. Even a semi-charged level two burst that came from the Buster of Blues or Mega looked more like a fiery glob.

The burst of plasma that freed itself from the Demon's weapon resembled an icy blue comet, deadly yet beautiful all at the same time.

Blues managed to dodge free of the shot, but Mega Man couldn't…with the Super Adapter, he lost his ability to slide. Haphazardly, he tried to jump free of the blast.

It missed most of him, thankfully…but the right fin of his Super Adapter was shot. Rush howled in pain and disengaged, morphing back into his normal canine form.

He wobbled on his feet for a moment before tipping over and howling out in pain.

"RUSH!" Mega Man screamed. Another echo slammed through the air, only a moment before a second blast of hot blue plasma ate into Rush's uncovered underbelly.

The robotic dog never echoed again…vanished instantly by the superhot fury of a shot that should have never come.

And the Demon laughed…He threw his head back and laughed, long and uproariously at his kill.

Grief stricken, Mega Man turned about and screamed at the Demon.

Bass took the opportunity of the distraction and flew downwards to ground level, pushing himself forward in a power dive and plowing straight through Wily's final creation. The blow was strong, strong enough to stun the Demon and send him sprawling forward a few steps.

But as Bass flew on towards Protoman and Mega, the Demon recovered and fired a flurry of smaller plasma shots, face contorted in rage. Bass reacted too late, and he too was grounded as a wounded Treble disengaged to a far off corner of the field. The Demon tried to destroy Treble as well, but the robotic dog of Wily proved too angry and quick for the shots to hit.

Bass, Mega Man, and Protoman all took advantage of the Demon's session of target practice to power up their supershots. Simultaneously, they all released at the same time.

The Demon noticed them coming, and dodged out of the way in an unbelievable blur of speed. Protoman could feel the pain in his systems begin to ebb up again.

"This guy is a monster…" Mega Man paled.

"We've underestimated him this round." Protoman wheezed, gripping at his chest as the pain flared up worse than ever. "You'll…have to get him in the next round."

"You'll??" Mega Man said oddly, looking at his comrade. Protoman looked up, a grimace of agony on his face.

"That's right…YOU. I'll stay behind and slow this bastard down…" Bass clamped a hand on his shoulder.

"Like Hell I'm leaving you alone with this thing. The Demon's more of my problem than he is yours…" Bass clenched his fist up. "Mega Man, you head back. And take Treble with you."

A flurry of shots suddenly was thrown up against them, as the Demon unleashed more of his Buster's fury. Bass was hit and thrown backwards a few feet by the reeling blow, his chest armor smoking from the attack. Protoman managed to raise his shield, but even then he found the force of the attack too immense.

The metal of his white and red plasmaburst proof shield glowed hotter and hotter from a level of plasma it had never before had to face. In an unbelievable act of ultimate betrayal, it snapped in two and let the full fury of the attack through to assault Protoman.

The prototype writhed and jerked in the hail, some parts of his armor being charred to atoms, other times the blows managing to hurl themselves clean through, pockmarking him with gaping wounds.

"Protoman!!" Mega Man gasped.

Somehow managing to keep himself from falling into stasis, Protoman held on and turned around to look at Mega Man.

"GO…" He whispered hollowly.

"But…"

"GO!!" Protoman barked at long last. He grimaced and collapsed onto his knees, the pain of his system's energy glitch and the ultimate wounds suffered at Wily's Demon impacting at the same time.

Bass struggled to pull himself to his feet, and yelled at Mega Man as well.

"Get outta here! Get Treble outta here! We'll try our best to stop him!"

"I can't…"

"WE'RE ALREADY DEAD, YOU STUPID BASTARD!!" Bass screamed. "JUST GO!!"

Lower lip quivering in pain and anguish, Mega Man at last gave the briefest nod of his head and warped away. Treble took one long mournful look at his master.

"Get outta here, you stupid mutt!" Bass ordered despairingly. "Save yourself!"

Treble seemed to almost whimper…but then he too vanished in a blink of warped light.

And then it was just Bass and Protoman, both gravely wounded, left to face the full fury of Wily's Demon.

Bass helped Protoman to get to his feet.

"Can't…hold out much…longer…" Protoman wheezed, clutching at the wound in his chest that leaked vital fluids. That sick grin of twisted pleasure was on the Demon's face as he approached them.

Almost as if he sensed the fear seeping off of them.

"Wily…what the Hell were you thinking…" Bass mumbled, trying to get into a defensive pose.

Silently, Protoman stepped in front of Bass and shook his head, even though he was staring at the Demon.

"No, not yet…Not your time."

"You're half dead, he'll rip you to shreds in seconds…"

"Not before…One last shot…" Protoman wheezed, stumbling forward.

The pain slowed him down incredibly, he didn't have to fake fatigue…

The glitch in his body and this damnable bastard of Wily's were conspiring against him…

The Demon began to chuckle lowly at the base of his throat as he drew nearer to the gravely injured Protoman, not noticing the unearthly green light shimmering about his body.

"Here's something to smile about, you sick bastard…" Protoman mumbled, feeling his voice transistors beginning to short out and die. "_BIIG BANG SHOT!!"_

Protoman lifted his Buster one final time, bracing it only inches away from the Demon's torso…and fired…

The Big Bang Shot, Protoman's final weapon, a blast of power so intense it drained almost everything out of him…

Before, it had destroyed King's shield.

Now, it became the first blast to truly HURT the Demon…

And then as the Demon screamed in rage and gripped his hands around Protoman's neck, melting armor revealing twisted, sparking wires underneath, everything seemed to slow down…

Pain…I know pain…

I've felt abandoned. I've felt used. I've felt like I was nothing more than an accident. But not anymore.

The pain…the pain is finally beginning to subside, and an unusual peace is falling over me…

_Is this…what it's like to die…_

I've done everything I could…I stayed behind for a reason…

_Even if…hadn't lost to Wily's Demon…glitch would have…_

All the forces in the Universe have conspired against me. One way or another, I was going to die…

_Today is a good day to die…_

I die as I've lived, fast, on my own, in a final act of defiance…I've lived long, I have my memories, I've had my time.

But X's time hasn't even begun yet…

_I can't hate him…he's my littlest brother, he hasn't even breathed the air of a summer night sky…He has to live…_

And this Demon threatens that…

_Light…Didn't hate you…why did you always…_

He didn't hate me…I'm just the black sheep of the family…

_Even Black Sheep can shine…_

Don't you get it, you stupid red freak…

_Even if I die…HE will stop you…_

At least now, I've done something valuable with my life. I'm tired, tired of fighting, tired of being thrown around…I'll be able to sleep now. My dreams will end…And X's will begin…

_I've hurt the Demon, I can see it in his eyes, a sudden presence of pain redirected into anger…_

He has me by the neck…what, does he think he can choke me??

_You won't win, Demon…You'll never win. You'll be stopped…_

Perhaps not today…not by me, or by Bass, maybe not even by Mega Man…

_But you'll be stopped…_

And he's smiling at me, that sick twisted grin, as if he's trying to make me quiver in fear…

_I never quivered in fear before…You can go to Hell…_

So I grin straight back at him…

And suddenly, a melody ingrains itself into my mind, a familiar one I've heard countless times before…

_Four tones…five notes…_

Oh, wait…That's whistling…It's me…I'm…whistling…

The Demon grows angry now, he's thrown me into the air like a rag doll, I see him raise his Buster for the ultimate kill…

_Can you hear me, Demon??_

_I'm still whistling…_


	6. His Brother's Keeper

_**MEGA MAN X: WHISPERS IN TIME**_

By Erico

CHAPTER FOUR: HIS BROTHER'S KEEPER

Okay people, show of hands. How many among you can say without hesitation that when you were made, you were an accident and a failure in your father's eyes?

Okay, put your hands down right now, all you illegitimate human buggers. You don't count, because your parents knew DAMN WELL what they were doing when they made the beast with two backs in the Cadillac's kooshy leather interior. My dad was about a few hundred screws loose when he patched me together, and he hasn't gotten any saner since.

My father is Albert William Wily. Or, as most of the world knows him, just plain Wily, the madman who uses robots to try and take over the world. Or something along those lines. I don't really give a flying cow anymore. Speaking of cows, wouldn't that be something funny to see…a flying cow?? Because if a flying cow did exist, it'd make for great target practice. And you'd get Big Macs afterwards!

And that brings the topic to me. I'm Bass. Remember, the freak with yellow and black armor, and a REAAAL mean disposition…

Think I asked to be like this?? No. I was born out of nothingness. Just one day, I didn't exist, and the next, POOF. Here I am, blinking and looking up into the cackling face of a flaming idiot.

Wily generally is an idiot. He keeps ranting and raving about all his Goddamn grand schemes, keeps planning and executing these Robot Rebellions. Perhaps sometime back waaaay before I was made, he had some rational purpose. Now he just does it because destruction is fun and he wants to destroy Mega Man.

Destroying Mega Man is the only thing I really give a darn about. Wily's plans are stupid, usually pointless. I mean, the guy's INSANE!! How am I supposed to feel loyalty, feel admiration for a crazy old guy with static electricity filled white hair and a huge bald spot?

Early on, I didn't feel like that…

No, early on, I was like some sort of stupid lapdog. I wanted to make Wily feel proud of me. I wanted to be the golden boy. The Seventh Robot Rebellion was my time to shine.

And so I failed. He did too…But that was it. Wily was forever turned against me after that…

Well, FINE.

_If he wants to hate me because I failed once, fine…_

You wanna know how much it hurts me to be seen as a failure by Wily? As if it wasn't bad enough I was an accident…

Yup, that's where we approach the sticky subject of my creation. Wily was trying to build a robot that could outclass Mega Man. Somehow along the way, he created a new source of power called 'Bassnium'. So he stuck it in me, and called me Bass. I was an accident. He didn't mean to come up with Bassnium, he just did. How he managed to, through all that insanity, I have no fragging clue. He just did.

Maybe he was hoping for a robot with high combat intelligence, but low personality. _ERRRRNHH._ Sorry, Doc. As far as I was concerned, one didn't exist without the other.

That first time I fought Mega Man seriously, I was doing it for Wily.

_But now I know why I hate him so much now…why I'm so obsessed with beating him…_

When I lost to Mega Man, Wily lost his faith in me. I fell from favor. And no matter how much of an outer wall I put up, I can never disregard the inner truth eating at me, that all along, I just wanted Wily to accept me for who I was.

I thought, KNEW, that if I could manage to take out Mega Man, Wily would be happy with me again…

_But it never happened…_

So Wily and I just ended up going our separate ways. Occasionally, I'd help him with one of his evil schemes. If it meant there was a chance I'd be able to fight Mega Man…

Eventually, I lost my mindset about beating Mega Man to regain Wily's admiration. I just began to fight him because he was the cause of all my grief.

_"Bass, why must I fight you?? We are not enemies!"_ Yeah, how many times have I heard that from you, Mega?? Too many to count. But you don't know, couldn't understand why I fight you…

All through this, there was one source of solace I had. Even when everything seemed to come crashing down on me, when everyone hated me with a deep vengeance, I always had my best buddy.

Treble. Although some call me Forte, and thusly call him Gospel, I know him as Treble. He's big. He's powerful. And he's purple. He's my friend.

Wily created him to be my version of Mega Man's Rush. An all purpose, go anywhere dog robot ally. But unlike Rush, Treble's a little more vicious, a little more violent, and a Helluva lot more capable of tearing up shit.

Treble's a smart little puppy dog. He can't talk like humans can, but he can growl. And speak in computer binary language. Well, SWEAR in binary, at least. Treble's usually quiet, keeps to himself, likes to just do his thing of hunting little critters and ripping them to pieces. And then he brings back the remains to me.

Treble's like me in so many ways…He's always seeking approval, seeking that truth that, yes, he's appreciated. I never yell at him, never scold him just because he does something stupid. I'm not Wily, I'm not going to turn out like him. I'm not going to let Treble suffer like I do. We're two of a kind, Treble and me. We're both creations of Wily who were made to outdo and defeat Mega Man. And his own stupid little mutt. I don't get angry at Treble, how can I? He's the only friend I have.

Whenever I get too bent out of shape, all I need to do is kneel down and scratch his ears. Everything in the world seems right then.

* * *

And somehow, Wily came up with the foolhardy idea that seeing as all his other harebrained schemes had failed, it might work better if he built ANOTHER robot. One apparently better than me.

I remember looking at the plans. Long-haired girly robot, I believe is the words I used. Of course Wily laughed at me. Duh.

In that single span of time, he told me flat out I was little more than an accident and a failure, and that he was building a robot to replace me.

One based on the schematics of a 'Mega Man X' that Light was supposedly constructing, Wily's own little halfbreed with red armor and an unbelievably stupid blond ponytail of hair behind him. Of course, Wily was building the newer robot with a microfusion tank instead of the Bassnium energy I ran on. He wasn't taking any sort of chance that goof would end up like me.

I just put it out of my mind then…I had more important things to waste my time on. Like fighting Mega Man almost every flaming chance I got.

And then that day came.

_Why…Wily, why…_

It's a day that's burned into my mind as deeply as Mega Man's face.

It's the day that the entire world almost fell into ruin…and the entire world went on without knowing…

August 7th, 2085.

* * *

I think I made my viewpoint clear enough as we all stood in that large room of Wily's latest Skull Fortress.

"Doc, you're just flaming NUTS!!" All the Robot Masters in the Fortress, and me and Treble were all crowded around in that room, standing a fair distance from Wily and his monitors and the capsule.

The capsule. Somehow, while I'd been busy the last few years, Wily had been tinkering on and off with his 'perfect robot.' And now, it was only moments away from first activation.

_Wily, do you have any idea what you're getting into…_

"Doc, reconsider it for a moment!! This bastard's untested, there's no telling what he'll do!" I said. As if that'd do any good…Treble backed me up by growling at the…the THING inside the capsule. Good ol' Treble. Even now, we're two peas in a pod.

_Wily is insane…His mind is gone, he's nothing but a wraith kept contained inside that worn out body of flesh and tired blood._

He turned to me, his face a snarl.

"I will TELL you what he will do!! He will do what YOU never COULD!! HE WILL DESTROY MEGA MAN!! AND MEGA MAN X AS WELL!!"

_That hurts…_He hurt my feelings then. At long last, he severed whatever ties of loyalty he might have held for me. I was at long last, the complete outcast.

_I was the mistake. And now, I'm being replaced…_

By that Goddamned THING.

_Wily, you don't need him, all you need is me…_I can't cry, I'm a robot. I'm not capable of producing tears. Even so, I want to.

_I hate him, I hate his perfect robot, I HATE THEM ALL!!_

Wily turns back to the capsule as I bow my head. Treble nudges his muzzle into my lowered hand, consoling my hurt feelings, not whimpering. Just letting me know that there's still someone in the world who cares about what happens to me…

* * *

_GODDAMNIT, DIDN'T I WARN YOU WILY!!_

In a flash, my Buster was up and firing. The Shadow Blade headed straight for Wily was blown away, and I found strange words gushing from my mouth.

"TAKE OUT THE DEFECTIVE ROBOT!! HE'S TRYING TO KILL WILY!!"

Oh, they all reacted to that. They had to. Protecting Wily is their precious First Law. And even me and Treble tried to charge the Demon.

He'd knocked Shadow Man into scrap with a single blow and a burst of speed I almost wasn't able to follow…

_Just what kind of capabilities did you give this thing…Wily, you're a flaming insane fool…_

One by one, they all fell at his hands…_I'd never seen a robot cause so much destruction just by using his hands and feet…_

"C'mon, Treble!" I screamed. "Let's slag this guy!" Treble was of course, in complete synch with my thoughts. Acting as one, yet not fused into our flight mode, we lunged at the robot.

He was busy tearing Centaur Man to shreds by the time we reached him…using the legs he ripped off the green horned robot, he was screaming and yowling in every direction, flailing his makeshift weapons about like some sort of samurai.

Which he wasn't. The only honorable Japanese class warrior robot Wily had, Yamato Man, was already dead. He'd been one of the first close enough to try and attack the Demon, and Wily's 'perfect robot' had ended up swiping his spear and gutting him.

Treble charged onwards underneath the Demon's swinging field of makeshift nunchuks, managing to clamp tightly onto the crazy red fool's leg with a metal piercing snap. I could hear the Demon howl out at that…but if left alone, Treble'd be fried just like the others…

My Buster went up and I started firing at the range of ten feet…

It did something to him. Unable to focus solely on either of us, he seemed to freeze up as he pondered how best to handle it, all the while his armor beginning to heat up from my barrage, and his leg beginning to creak and groan from the strain of Treble's iron jaws twisting and gnashing on his support.

_Then I knew Wily had given him more than he should have…Too damned smart…_

He'd only hesitated for about three seconds. In a sudden movement that caught me by surprise, he jerked his entire leg with Treble attached up into the air, pulling my own dog into my line of fire. I stopped my barrage then and there, but Treble still yelped as a shot burned into his body.

With my assault stopped, the Demon slammed both fists viciously into Treble's side, causing him to yelp out even louder…And that's when his grasp on the Demon's leg faltered.

Using his limb as a slingshot, the Demon hurled Treble into me, the force of the blow sending us both sprawling backwards through the air until we collapsed against a wall.

As further insult, the Demon had hurled Centaur Man's legs after us. Instinctively, I moved to protect Treble, sticking out my leg to deflect the shots.

_Just metal…not even projectiles, just thrown objects, but…_

Damned, they hurt…I hurt all over, and I knew Treble did too…

All it took was that. Less than ten seconds for the Demon to send us both sprawling, with enough injuries sustained to knock us clean out of the fight…

_And the other robots continued…_

I took a moment to gaze over at Wily…unbelievably, he watched the display with a sense of sick and twisted pleasure…

_WILY, YOU'RE INSANE!! LOOK AT HIM, HE'S KILLING US!!_

Elec Man…God, even he can't defeat this madman…_Wily, you've doomed us all…_

Oh, God…

And then Flash Man and Quick Man fall…and the Demon turns to Wily. I'm no longer a threat to him, neither is Treble, all the Demon's attentions are set solely on Wily…

Wily's grin fades…his face is serious now.

_RUN!! RUN, BEFORE HE…_

The Demon's smiling and laughing his head off as he snaps first one of Wily's legs…and then the other.

_God, I'm getting sick, I can't watch this…I have to stop him, it's too late for Wily but I have to stop him…Wily gave him an auto-timer warp coordinate, I know where the Demon is going next…_

All my life, I'd wondered just what good I was to anyone…

_I can't even protect Wily as he's…Being killed…_

Treble whimpers now. He knows as much about the horror of this day as I do…

_If I was human, I'd vomit…_

We have to stop the Demon…Have to stop Wily's insane final creation from doing this to anyone else…and he will, that auto-timed warp coordinate'll take him outside of Tokyo…

_Can't let him…Can't let him kill MEGA MAN!! MEGA MAN IS MINE!!_

What about the others, the other humans and Light…

_Don't care, they're not important…_

But if I'm to stop the Demon, I can't do it alone. I can't do it with Treble. We need help…

And there's only one place where we'd be able to find help in taking down this Demon…

_God, I must be nuts…but everything's nuts now, nothing's the same, it's all changed into this nightmare transience…_

I bring up my warp generator, instinctively, I know Treble is doing the same. Treble…always on my wavelength.

"We'll get him soon for this." I growled at Treble. His throat lowly rumbles, he understands what I'm saying…But he doesn't like the notion in my head any better than I do.

_I want to kill the guy…and now I have to team up with him to stop this Demon…_

The whole world's gone insane, and even as my body screams at me through the pain, I feel myself slipping into the blissful existence of nothingness, that boundary between the living world and that state of warped particles and energy that form a warp transfer…

_Perhaps it is you who has changed…by standing still…_

* * *

The warp coordinates Treble and I used were far more precise than Wily's rough ones. Years of wandering, of tracking down Mega Man had given me the location of his home. And while I was unable to warp into it, I could still warp outside of it.

_How surprised were they to see an orange and black beam of light streak down from the sky above in front of their house…not much, I've done it before. Treble came crashing down beside me, reforming from his own beam of purple particles and energy._

They all piled out, and surprise, surprise…Duo had dropped back in for a visit…didn't that spacegoing freak leave for some distant star system YET…

Protoman, Duo, Mega Man, even that mutt Rush and their helper friends took up the front line, instinctively guarding Roll and the elderly Doctor Light.

I didn't know for a while I had been looking at them more strangely than usual…

It wasn't until I felt my body begin to convulse in a strange way that I knew I was showing signs of despair…

_Almost crying…_

I tried to stop myself, tried to look tough, to look angry…

_I couldn't…damn all my efforts, I just couldn't…_

My creator had just been destroyed by an insane robot…one I had been powerless to stop. I couldn't restrain my grief, not even in front of them…

"Bass, what are you doing here?!" Mega Man demanded, not quite angry, but more than likely unhappy at the concept of having to battle with me again.

I could feel my body begin to turn on itself…the injuries sustained from those scant seconds at the Demon's hands were potent. Not life threatening, but potent…

"Wily's dead…" I heard myself croak in a ragged voice. And then, as if saying that was a shattering blow, I felt myself collapse…

_It was a blow…even though, like Mega Man, I can bend and even break the Laws of Robotics…I had been unable to save Wily. He was dead now, dead because…_

_**A robot must never harm, or through inaction, allow harm to come to Wily…**_

_If I was any other robot, the word 'Wily' would be replaced by 'a human'…_

My head was spinning and reeling at that…Everything seemed to blur out of focus as my mind clicked in on that singular pattern, and slowly I could feel my mental pathways begin to drift into an inexorable downwards spiral, towards complete mind freeze, shutdown…

_The First Law…Had I broken it…Had I allowed harm to come to Wily…If so, then by the simple construction of my mind, I was doomed to die by my brain rebelling against me…_

I tore my helmet off, felt it slam to the ground beside me…

_The pain…GOD, THE PAIN!!_

All the voices, shattering, splitting, merging in my head as a giant chorus of chaos…

_**You have failed…you failed…you broke the First Law…Broke Wily's First Law…**_

_But…_

It was sheer will that saved me from becoming a drooling mass of circuits in those precious seconds…

By force, I overrode all the doubts, overrode all qualms that I had broken the First Law…

_I had done everything possible to save Wily from…_

_The Demon…It was the Demon who killed Wily, not me…_

And because of that…Because of that, I lived…

The pain subsided, my head cleared, once again I could make out the voices of the stunned and tepidly curious bunch…

"Now you're just pulling our legs…" Protoman muttered, sighing at the end of his statement.

_Pulling your legs…You think it's funny…You didn't have to see The Demon snap Wily's legs into uselessness before…_

"I'M NOT LYING!! WILY'S DEAD, AND SO ARE ALL THE ROBOT MASTERS HE HAD WITH HIM!!" I screamed, turning my face up and glaring at them all…

_I was alive now, but I didn't feel alive…All I had left was my rage…_

I felt their gazes drift down on me, Roll's especially…

Roll was the one creation of Light's that Wily never commented on much, who I never saw as much. All the times before I had laid eyes on her bright eyes and blond tresses, she seemed to shudder backwards in fear at me…

"You're hurt!" She exclaimed, bounding out from behind the massed warriors and kneeling down beside me.

Treble was at my other side, and with his usual candor, he lifted his head up and growled at the sister of Mega Man who dared to draw this close to me.

"DOWN." I said…My voice not as strong as it could have been. But Treble got the message…we weren't here to fight them. Not this time. Maybe not ever again…

We were out there in front of Light's house en masse for quite some time, as I retold them everything I knew of The Demon, of his creation, and how he was designed to destroy Mega Man…and Mega Man X…

_I was responsible as much as Wily was for bringing The Demon into life…I stole the plans for X back in 2081, during the Seventh Robot Rebellion. My fault…It was my fault…_

But we didn't have enough time. We didn't have enough time to mope. The clock was ticking down on Wily's final doomsday, and something had to be done…

In a sense, the goals of Light's bunch and me and Treble were almost the same.

I wanted to stop The Demon, I wanted to make him suffer for all he'd done. I wanted to grind him into atoms, scream in rage as I ripped HIS LIMBS in half…

They wanted to protect Mega Man X. It was an unholy alliance at best…but it was the only one we could work with.

We were the only ones capable of stopping The Demon. And most importantly of all, Light wanted to keep this quiet…If the world learned that Wily's final creation had flipped out, destroyed everything in its path and then done the unthinkable step of destroying its own MASTER…

_You have your own perogatives. I understand that. You want to protect the future, you want to make the world one that's safe for your youngest sibling, your youngest son to wake up in…_

_It's little more than a pipe dream to me…Wily's Demon is based on X's designs. What's to stop your own master creation from flipping out the same as Him?? You fight for whatever you damn well please, Mega._

_He's taken everything from me, even the barest shred of forgiveness and acceptance by my master…You save the world. I'll blow his damned head off because all I have left is my rage…_

_My rage…it isn't at you anymore, Mega Man…You ruined my life, but he destroyed it. _

_I know you're coming, Demon…_

* * *

"Blast it, I'll be fine!!" Bass snapped tersely, pulling his arm back away from the tender ministrations of Roll.

The female robot glowered back at him, meeting him seething glare for glare.

"You're not fine. Your leg's been crushed into almost complete uselessness, and your arm isn't faring much better." Bass tried to hiss, but as her arm went up and squeezed tightly around his damaged limb, his protests faded into debilitating pain… "See what I mean?" She accused.

Bass lowered his head down, muttering something under his breath, loud enough that Roll was able to distinguish it wasn't a curse or insult of some kind.

"Pardon?" She asked, reaching for the nearby medical scanner. Bass lifted his head up, a short mane of purple hair waving behind him. That was the one thing he shared with Treble, his short hair colored the same as his pet.

"I said, why the Hell are you helping me??" Bass said louder, his eyes blurry from the pain. Even robots felt sensations akin to pain. It kept them from losing limbs from lack of stimulus.

Roll pondered the question for a long moment and shrugged finally.

"Because Doctor Light told me to, and because Blues seems to trust you a bit more than I'd expect."

"Why would anyone trust me?" Bass murmured. "I'm one of Wily's forsaken children, fer Chrissakes."

"I asked Blues the same thing once." Roll countered, staring into his eyes as she lowered the scanner and pulled up a cylindrical regenerating wand, running it up and down his arm over and over again. As energy was fed to the auto repair systems, and enhanced by minute particles of high tensile metals needed for internal repairs, the only daughter of Light continued. "And you know what he told me?"

Bass sat and stared at her dumbly. Roll shook her head, refusing to look into his eyes as she continued her repair tasks.

"He told me that you were different from the others. You didn't hate blindly. You weren't Wily's perfect son. You didn't go out every day and terrorize the populace for the joy of it. He saw promise in you, a glimmering ray of hope I couldn't see." She finally looked up as she pulled back the device and smirked. "The arm feeling any better?"

Bass flexed it a few times. Aside from some residual pain messages, the wounds suffered in that sliver of time with The Demon seemed to be repaired.

"Seems to be working fine." To further test it, he morphed his hand into his Buster, and then back again in a blink. "Yup, you fixed it." He begrudgingly admitted.

Attitude and overconfidence got the better of him as he hopped down from his sitting position on the table, and promptly gasped as he felt his sparking, badly injured leg collapse out from underneath him.

Roll's firm, superhuman grip caught him easily and held him steady for a long, humiliating moment as he was forced to look up into her smirking face again.

"Well now…never thought I'd see the day a robot would fall for me." Roll chuckled, the barest hint of a flush rising to her cheeks as her emotional circuits churned out excess heat.

Bass managed a weak smile that was almost more of a grimace.

"Don't flatter yourself too much." He grumbled sarcastically. "Blondes annoy me. Scream too much." Roll's smile faded into a bit of shock before Bass stuck his hands up. "Just kidding…but don't get any ideas in that pretty little head of yours." He shook his hair back and pushed himself back up to a sitting position on the cot Light had left out for him.

Roll promptly knelt down and pushed against his injured leg. Hard. Cringing back with his eyes half shut, Bass managed to wheeze out, "What was that for?!"

"The dumb blonde comment." Roll muttered, standing back up. "Now if we're done exchanging insults, I have to fix your leg up." She yawned and stretched, her familiar red dress stretching up with her and revealing a little more of her legs. "Sheesh, how did you manage to get banged up as much as you did? I swear…"

"You try fighting a robot that's as comfortable killing with his bare hands as he is with weapons and laughs while he's causing insane carnage." Bass sighed. "No, more than that…The Demon is more than a robot…"

"More than you?"

"More than Mega Man. Right on par with what X probably has." Bass answered glumly. "I can't sugarcoat it, Roll. The Demon's already killed every Robot Master that stood in his way with ease, and killed Wily. He's insane, he's powerful, and he's more dangerous than anything ever made before by human hands. I don't even know if we'll be able to stop him."

"Then why are you doing this??" Roll asked quizzically. Bass clenched his hand up, putting his helmet back on. He looked over at Treble, curled up in a corner of the room, content to his own thoughts and leaving the two humanoid robots alone to theirs.

"Because I have to." Bass replied finally, anger gone from his voice, filled only with steadfast determination. His clenched fist dropped down to his good knee and lay there, tensed up as he continued. "Mega Man may have made my life miserable. That's why I always wanted to defeat him…to get my old life back."

Roll backed off, looking at Bass with that scrutinizing gaze, as Wily's unloved child continued.

"But The Demon's worse, Roll…He didn't make my life miserable. He destroyed it. He killed my creator, he killed all the robots I called allies…And I know that before, and even after he takes out Mega Man X, he'll do the same to everyone in the world who gets within eyesight. He has no heart, he has no soul. He's just a coldblooded killing machine with more smarts, more power, more speed than I could ever dream of having. As far as I'm concerned, I'm dead already…" Bass lowered his head down, shaking it back and forth. "Borrowed time, Roll, that's all I'm living on. He's taken everything away that held meaning to me, aside from Treble. I have nothing to go back to, nothing to keep existing for. The only thing I have now is the bottled screams and anguish of my years of suffering. It was focused on Mega Man once. Now it's the Demon."

Something changed in that room then. At last, Roll understood what Blues meant…

_Bass isn't the monster you think he is. He's just had a rough life. Am I any different??_

"You have to have something to live for." Roll said quietly, walking over to stand beside him.

"I do." Bass replied. Roll shook her head.

"No. Not rage. Not your pain. Something more than that."

"I have nothing else." Bass croaked. Roll gently reached over and clasped her hands around his clenched fist.

"I can't undo everything that's gone wrong in your life." Roll said as a surprised Bass lifted his gaze up to look at her. She looked into his face, eyes clear. "But what I do know is that things are different now. You're more than what Wily made you. You're not his servant, you're not his abandoned son. You're one of us."

"Who is us?" Bass asked painfully.

"The ones who are going to put a stop to all of Wily's mad dreams once and for all. We may have different reasons, but we have the same goal. And for once, you're fighting for a decent reason." Roll smiled at Bass. "Maybe Blues was right. You are capable of change."

Bass lowered his gaze back down, and shook his head back and forth.

"I don't know anymore." His body betrayed him again then, shuddering in mild convulsions "I'm still the same person. I still have the same emotions, the same outlook and demeanor. So how am I changed?"

Roll examined him for a few more moments silently, then shook her head back and forth.

"You want to cry, don't you?" Bass couldn't say no. His mild convulsions were evidence enough. "It's tearing you from the inside out. This dull ache you can't attribute to a physical wound. It doesn't seem real, yet it is all the same."

"How do you know what I'm feeling??"

"It's the same thing we all felt eventually, Bass." Roll said quietly. "We may be just robots, but we have feelings. We can be happy, and we can be sad. And we can feel grief. That's what you're feeling now."

"Grief." Bass said, irritation beginning to show through. "That's what it is. Grief." He seemed to laugh at that.

Roll merely stepped back and stared at him.

"Yes."

"Oh, well THANK YOU ROLL!!" Bass cackled insanely, tilting his head back and exhorting his chuffed chuckles. "The resident robot psychologist has just nailed my problems. I'm suffering through GRIEF!!"

"YES!" Roll shouted, more irritated at him now. "Because you're the only robot of Wily's regime left. Because you FAILED to stop the Demon from killing your creator. Because your world's been SHATTERED."

Treble lifted his head up to stare at the two. Bass's chortling grew more subdued as Roll continued, softer and sadder now.

"Because for the first time, you're experiencing a state of emotion that's more overpowering and draining than anything you've ever experienced. It makes you want to cry, to just get rid of it all. But you can't cry. Because you're a robot, and you lack the ability to make tears."

Bass slumped over, his head bowed again like a beaten dog's. Treble chuffed and went back to relaxing himself.

"So what can I do?" Bass asked mutedly.

"The only thing we can do." Roll said plaintively. "Move on. Let the experience strengthen you, give you purpose. And move on with your life." She folded her arms. "All this time, you've been fighting…and somehow, Mega Man always had the impression you never knew what for."

"For vengeance." Bass whispered.

"Against who??" Roll whispered back. She shook her head. "In any case, this next set of repairs is going to be more grueling. Your leg got bashed up the worst."

"You need me to power down?" Bass asked. Roll nodded. "Just promise me…I'll wake up." Bass said, his eyes focused. "I still have things left to accomplish before my time in the spotlight fades away."

Roll offered him a weak smile. "I'll be waiting for you when you wake up."

"Good." Bass sighed, lying back against the cot. Roll began to hum to herself as Bass's various systems began to shut down.

"And Roll??"

"Hmm?" The blond haired beauty mumbled, looking down into his face.

Bass offered a wry grin. "Don't go kissing the sleeping beauty."

"What, afraid you'll turn back into a frog?" Roll chortled. The two grinned at one another for a few more seconds, and then Bass's eyes went dull and shut, his head drooping lazily to one side.

Treble chose that moment to get up, yawn, stretch, and walk over to the table, standing up on his haunches and hanging his front feet up onto Bass's good leg. He looked up at Roll and chuffed.

"Quiet, pooch." Roll mumbled, reaching for the nearby wire resplicer. "I'm not gonna go getting a crush over your master."

Treble chuffed again, seemingly content at that new parallel. Roll, despite her best attempts at control, giggled and smiled at the dog's reply.

"Still…do you think I should color his hair pink and see what he says??"

Finally, Treble growled at Roll since he'd entered the house.

"Well, never mind then." And the night went on…

* * *

It was early the next morning when I stepped outside of Light's house, perhaps for the last time. Roll's repairs had gone off without a hitch, and I was back in full functioning order.

_But even that might not be enough…_

I whistled quickly, and in a flash of purple, Treble bounded beside me, eager to serve, and as eager to put a stop to this nightmare as I was.

Mega Man, Protoman, and Doctor Light were already outside talking to one another. But they had enough good graces, or suspicion to pause their conversation and look to me.

"Bass." Light said curtly. I blinked once and offered him the same.

"Doc." I turned my attention away from Light, looking to Mega Man and shaking my head.

"I bet you never thought we'd be doing this again…" I grumbled. Mega Man seemed a little more cheery than I did.

_Of course, he hadn't faced the Demon yet…Mega, if only you'd seen him, that smile of yours wouldn't exist…_

"What, teaming up to fight a berserk robot made by Wily?" He chortled. "We've done if before."

"It's worse now. Far worse. King was WEAK compared to this guy. We're all going to have to do our best to make it out of this alive." I growled it with all the focus I could muster, because it was precisely the truth.

Protoman seemed to have his own problems, but I knew that having him along might well turn the tide in our favor.

"Eddie! Gimme an E-Tank!" Protoman hollered. That junky little red colored robot from Light's fliptop line came warbling out of the house and ejected a cylindrical canister. I'd seen the like countless times before, but why would Protoman need an energy boost…We hadn't even begun the battle…

"Well, if we're going to go, let's go. Time isn't on our side." He muttered. I nodded appreciatively at him, remembering Roll's words.

_**He saw promise in you, a glimmering ray of hope I couldn't see…**_

Yeah, maybe Protoman knew me better than I knew myself. I just wish we had more time. To talk, to finally solve all those strings between us, to finally connect.

But we didn't have time. Protoman was right on that.

_The fates aren't going to shine on a bastard like me. Never have…and they never will._

We were the sorriest mess of protectors you would find as we stood there.

Leading the charge would be a hero who never wanted the title, a loner who hid in the shadows and behind his sunglasses, and the Devil's child. The Devil had made the Demon. And we had to stop it.

Duo was standing on top of Light's house, his mind and thoughts somewhere distant. Still, he managed an easygoing wave, not saying a darned thing. Of the three of us, only Mega Man waved back. I knew that Auto was still inside of Light's house, screwing and welding away on his missile cannon, a little gadget he'd constructed in the 8th Robot Rebellion.

And then there was Roll. Mega Man's sister, and according to human standards, a veritable knockout. I noticed her hair hadn't been tied back still. Since she'd brought me out of stasis, little had changed, it seemed. There was almost a sadness in her eyes that accompanied the worry.

_As if she was doing more than fearing for our lives…like she'd presaged we wouldn't return, blasting away any hope…_

"Come back alive." She said quietly, almost whispering.

"I will." _What the…_Yes, I'd said it…but so had Mega Man. We looked at another for a brief moment before I shrugged and turned my gaze elsewhere.

_Yeah, she probably meant it for him anyhow…who the Hell would care about me…_

I don't pretend to be any sort of saint. And if you're thinking about offering sympathy, you can save it. Nothing can change how things are. No amount of tears or flowers or chocolate can alter the hand that fate's dealt me. Just save your money so that when you start pumping out little rascals…

_They won't end up like me. Bitter, hopeless, and without redemption._

Mega Man and I fused with our respective canine pals. I almost snickered at the ludicrous look Rush's transformation gave Mega. When Treble and I merged, we did look menacing.

_But then, looks don't mean squat, do they?? After all, he kicked my ass. Countless times._

Mega Man turned to Doc Light. "Doc, you keep Auto and Beat and Duo here. If we fail, it'll be up to them to stop him…"

_Even he didn't think we could pull this off…Was everyone here as despondent and defeatist as I was?? _

I managed to stop myself from staring at Mega Man with my mouth agape. Now wasn't the time.

It wasn't time…

_Wasn't HIS time…_

* * *

We landed a quarter of a kilo away from the Demon, and even in the early morning sun, I knew it was him. I turned to speak to my two comrades, as they were. One of 'em, Protoman, had suddenly bent over a little and was holding a hand to his stomach, in obvious pain.

Yes, we can feel pain. _Unimaginable pain…_

"You gonna be all right?" I asked Protoman. The red and gray armored robot looked at me sardonically.

"Oh, I'm just fine and dandy. I just have a systems glitch that'll kill me very soon if this guy doesn't." Protoman shook his head. "Sure, I'm fine."

Mega Man chose to speak up at that moment, using his commanding "Leader" voice. "Blues, I never tell you to do many things. But now I'm ordering you to head back home and rest…We can handle this guy."

Protoman didn't bother responding to Mega Man's command. But not out of sheer disrespect. It was because the Demon had drawn near enough we could make his features out more clearly. The other two were transfixed by it. It looked more real, more full of life than any of us.

"I'm not 100 sure, but I think Wily gave him dash thrusters as well." I muttered to the other two.

"Like you have?" Protoman clipped.

"More like ten times better than what I have, if his earlier performance is any indication…" Once more, I felt that vehement rage build up inside of me. "Damnit, it's gotta stop…I have to stop him!!"

Protoman blinked, and then frowned at the Demon's approach. He pulled out his shield, and lowered it to the ready.

"Well, he's seen us. Get ready, fellas." I knew Protoman would do what he could, but I would serve this attack best in the air. So I jetted up and set my sights on the Demon.

We didn't have to talk, didn't have to argue tactics. We all just opened fire. Mega Man and Protoman catching the Demon in a crossfire, and me hitting him with purple blasts from above.

And yet, the Demon made it through the barrage without a scratch.

_Should have expected as much, considering all the Robot Masters he destroyed without a care…_

Mega Man and Protoman exchanged a few words before my comm went off with Proto's voice.

"Bass?"

"Present and pissed off." I growled back.

"The small stuff isn't going to work here. We're going to try supershots, but don't let up. Each one of us needs to set our shots so they hit at intervals and never give him a chance to recover." It seemed like an effective strategy, and it would hit him with more powerful plasma blasts.

But that effort too failed miserably…

"Won't ANYTHING hurt this guy?!" I heard Proto demand angrily. I could only shake my head and give an honest reply.

"Wily built this guy to defeat Mega Man. To defeat Mega Man X. I don't know what'll hurt him…"

And then the Demon started to move again…before, he'd been standing stark still, absorbing or deflecting our shots. Not now. He was done playing games, it looked like.

"Oh, Christ…" Protoman wheezed. "WATCH OUT, HE'S GOT A BUSTER!!"

"Shit!" I cursed.

"Say WHAT?!" Mega Man echoed. We all saw it, saw his arm raise up and flash for a moment while it changed…Changed into a weapon of destruction that was probably far more powerful than our own.

_Wily…Goddamnit, he was strong enough to take Mega Man out hand to hand, you had to give him a Buster…_

A locus of light surrounded his arm as it charged up, and the whine that came through the air was more like the scream of a banshee…

The shot he fired didn't come towards me. It went towards Proto and Mega.

Proto dodged, he was nimble enough…but in his Rush suit, Mega Man was nowhere near as mobile. Despite all his efforts, it slammed into a fin of the thruster assembly, forcing his dog Rush to break free into his normal form.

Before Mega Man could move to protect Rush, the Demon blew the robotic canine apart in a flash of plasma.

That turned my stomach…

_Because Treble might be next…I can't let him take Treble…_

Roaring, I soared down to ground level and plowed through the Demon headfirst, an energy barrier crackling around me. It was a move that had sent Mega Man reeling dozens of times.

But as I passed by, he managed to recover from the jarring blow somehow and fire on me…In the same manner as he'd done to Rush, he forced Treble to de-fuse from me. Unlike Rush, Treble was quick and ruthless enough he was able to avoid being blown to bits.

"NO YOU DON'T!!" I screamed, turning back around and charging up a supershot. Mega and Proto did as well, and we released at the same time. Our shots flew on, heading straight for the certain injury of our foe.

But his dash thrusters…

_Can there be nothing we can do against him…_

"This guy is a monster…" Mega Man paled.

"We've underestimated him this round." Protoman wheezed, gripping at his chest as the pain flared up worse than ever. "You'll…have to get him in the next round."

"You'll??" Mega Man said oddly, looking at his older brother. Protoman looked up, a grimace of agony on his face.

"That's right…YOU. I'll stay behind and slow this bastard down…" I clamped a hand on his shoulder.

"Like Hell I'm leaving you alone with this thing. The Demon's more of my problem than he is yours…" Perhaps it was better this way. Better that if we were to die, that Protoman and I should die together. A morose loner and the Devil's Son he saw promise in. "Mega Man, you head back. And take Treble with you."

We didn't have any time after I finished saying that for further discussion…

The Demon opened fire on us all with a hailstorm of plasma. I took a really bad hit, my body screaming at me as a gaping crater in my chest armor smoked. The impact had been enough to send me reeling.

But Protoman was worse…He'd tried to hide behind his shield, his venerable plasma deflective shield.

_It wasn't meant to face the kind of power the Demon had…_

It fell apart under the assault, and Protoman too was exposed to the maelstrom, jerking and writhing in all directions as the shots burned into and even through him.

"Protoman!!" Mega Man gasped.

Somehow managing to keep himself from falling into stasis, Protoman held on and turned around to look at Mega Man.

"GO…" He whispered hollowly.

"But…" My former nemesis protested.

"GO!!" Protoman screamed at him. The outburst came at a price…Protoman collapsed onto his knees. Somehow, I managed to get to my feet and look at Mega Man with all the anger I could muster.

"Get outta here! Get Treble outta here! We'll try our best to stop him!"

"I can't…"

"WE'RE ALREADY DEAD, YOU STUPID BASTARD!!" I screamed. "JUST GO!!" Mega Man was taken aback by the comment, and he seemed on the verge of tears…

_But robots can't cry, so his pain only continues to build…like mine…_

He left, but my dog Treble still refused to leave.

"Get outta here, you stupid mutt!" I ordered despairingly. "Save yourself!"

_Treble…go…I can't protect you now, not from him…And you can't save me…_

He whimpered for a moment, but he too, finally left.

And then we were alone.

The Demon, the Devil's first son, and the robotic vagabond.

I helped Protoman get to his feet, despite my own injuries. He was so much worse off, I wanted to do whatever I could for him.

"Can't…hold out much…longer…" Protoman wheezed, not looking at me, but the Demon…

_Drawing ever nearer with that same sadistic smile…Did Wily give that to him, or is it his own…_

"Wily…what the Hell were you thinking…" Moving to guard Protoman, I readied myself. But Protoman stumbled in front of me, one arm clutching at his chest, and the other dropped and limp, Buster slowly charging. And he spoke to me, in that hollow, injured voice.

"No, not yet…Not your time."

"You're half dead, he'll rip you to shreds in seconds…"

"Not before…One last shot…" And I could do nothing to stop him…He walked on towards the Demon, the Demon laughing in that low voice, and an unearthly green light about the wounded prototype's Buster.

_But I want to stop him, I want him to get as far away as he can…It's too late for me, and it IS my time…DAMNIT, BLUES!! I don't wanna LOSE YOU!!_

"Here's something to smile about, you sick bastard…" Protoman mumbled, so soft I could barely register it. But the next part of his statement was loud enough. "_BIIG BANG SHOT!!"_

His arm jerked up of its own accord, the exit port of his Buster only inches from the Demon's stomach…the flash of plasma was so intense, it blinded me for a moment.

_And he'd used it before…On King…It was ungodly powerful, but its use meant…Meant he…_

Oh, God…He was close to his inoperative state!!

When the light went down, I saw Protoman had been right…One last shot…

_And what it had done…_

The Demon's armor was melted and gone, and wires were exposed and sparking…

Blues had hurt the Demon…

But in his contorted rage, the Demon hurled Protoman up into the air and raised his own Buster.

"BLUES!!" I screamed…

_But all that came back was the sound of his whistling…_

And then he was gone. And I was alone…

Alone to face the Demon.

And yet…all my grief was gone.

_So was all my rage…_

I knew only one indisputable fact.

The Demon and I were spawned from the same twisted mind…And he was an undeniable danger.

"You've come far enough, Demon." I stated, almost surprised at how calm my voice was. "It ends here."

* * *

The Demon paused after the glory of Protoman's kill, slowly tilting his head down until his murderous eyes bored into me.

"You were born for nothing but destruction…You were born for nothing but revenge and the twisted goals of a madman whose time had long since run out." The Demon blinked at me. "And you and I come from the same madman. WILY."

That smile of his was gone now. Maybe the injury had knocked rationality into his skull, or perhaps he realized that we weren't forces to be toyed with. Yet, he said nothing, indicated nothing.

"He created you because of me." Bass growled. "You understand that?! **ME.**" The Demon didn't smile, but he slowly began to walk towards Bass, his fists tensed up and one hand safeguarding over his open wound.

"He considers you to be his perfect robot. Or should I say, CONSIDERED. You KILLED HIM. No robot should be able to kill a human…not with the level of malice and coldblooded intent you had!"

The Demon kept walking towards Bass. And Bass did nothing to stop him. One hand was tightly balled into a fist, and his other arm was his Buster, charging up and up, ignoring every last safety, the charge going far beyond what it should have been able to…far beyond what was safe.

"You're beyond aberrant, you're the greatest threat this planet's ever been faced with. You're beyond Wily. He was an insane madman whose escapades caused the suffering of untold thousands. Your existence would cause the suffering of MILLIONS!!"

The Demon said nothing, indicated nothing. He just kept walking towards Bass, that coldblooded stare burning into Bass's face. And the sky above continued to laugh and jeer at the drama below, granting the Earth a sunny clear horizon devoid of clouds.

Bass clenched his eyes shut, feeling every circuit along his Buster arm beginning to fry and crackle in pain from the overload. Using every last inch of his will, he forced his Buster to continue the plasma buildup and then severed the neural link to his arm. It hung limply, now beyond his control…but at least he wouldn't be hindered by the agonizing pain of having his arm circuits blow out as it continued.

"I thought that everything was meaningless, Demon. But now that's changed…You killed Rush, you killed Protoman, you killed Wily, and you killed every last robot master in the Skull Fortress. It has to stop. Somewhere, it has to stop, and their sacrifices must be claimed with true purpose."

The Demon was now only ten feet from Bass, and still coming with that deliberate gait. He was only five steps away…

_Five…_

"You are a blight…"

_Four…_

"Greater than any before…"

_Three…_

"You have killed, and you will kill again…

_Two…_

"But it must stop, and so I shout…"

_One…_

"GO BACK TO YOUR HELL, DEMON!!"

* * *

_It had to stop…_

I was beyond hope then. Like Protoman, my structural damage was so severe by his assault I would not have stood a chance going after him like a normal foe. And even then, I doubt that normal tactics would have worked. Certainly not supershots…

_Which left one option…_

Buster overload. It's an option that causes most to shudder even thinking about it…you shut off every safety, every backup security measure, and directly order your primary weapon to keep drawing in power. Busters have their limits, that's why most of the time it reaches a set level, and then it merely sustains the charge, no longer increasing it. But not during Buster overload. It keeps charging, keeps storing more and more energy until…

_Until the maelstrom grows too strong to be controlled…_

And then the plasma charge explodes, taking the Buster and whoever's attached to the weapon along with it.

_Why…_

I had no other options. Just that one. Protoman was dead. I told you that. I told you also I could not have gone on…

_Maybe I didn't want to go on…_

Maybe I'm tired of fighting. It long ago lost its meaning, its zeal and flavor. The only reason I fought was to defeat Mega Man, to…

_To win my father's love…??_

Maybe, I can't disregard anything now. I'm in the final three microseconds before my Buster's overload will go critical and explode, taking me, and hopefully, the Demon, along with it…

_Why did I live, why did I fight…_

_**You're more than a mindless drone, you're capable of change…**_

Protoman, did he truly see that in me? Or was Roll merely passing off pity, a trait she seems to have plenty of?

In the end, perhaps I belonged nowhere, belonged to no one. Maybe all along, I have just been Bass.

_And who the Hell is Bass?? What does Bass stand for??_

I didn't know for the longest time, but now I do…In my final moments before the void, I at last realize…

_Who I am…_

I'm NOT a failure. I may well be an accident, a fluke, but I'm NOT a failure…I went far beyond anything Wily ever thought I was capable of. And in the end, I am the force that is mopping up HIS failures…

Maybe he thinks that the Demon is a success…

_And is a success supposed to be beyond the rational, beyond the sane, so far gone he has no qualms destroying humans and enjoys drawing blood with a sickening relish…_

But I know the Demon is a failure. A horrific failure. Too much far too soon. Wily danced with the flame, and now he's paid for it.

_Do you hear me, Wily?! I'M NOT YOUR SLAVE._

I hope what I do here today accomplishes what must be done. Treble…Poor Treble, I care for him so much, but…Without me, where will he go, what will he do…

It ends here. One microsecond away, and no matter how fast my mind is capable of thinking, I will be destroyed very soon…I must finish my thoughts.

My life wasn't a waste, I was placed here for a reason.

_It's as much my fault the Demon exists. I brought Wily the plans…_

X's plans. And now because of that, it's my job to stop him. In some sort of sick, twisted way…If the bastard children of Wily could be called family, I might well call the Demon my brother. And now I have become my Brother's Keeper.

You must not exist to cause torment…if only things had been different, if Wily had given you what I have. If you had not been a blind killer, where would we be…what might we do…

But those questions will have to wait for later…

Because now I see a bright light coming upon me. I hear the unmistakable whine of my Buster overload, I feel searing heat pour over me…

Yet even as my senses give out and I'm blasted into atoms…

_I still hear his whistling…_

_And in the end, we'll all whistle…_

Whistle for the sacrifice, Protoman??

I'll join your song of the ages.


	7. Howl For The Ages

_**MEGA MAN X: WHISPERS IN TIME**_

By Erico

CHAPTER FIVE: HOWL FOR THE AGES

I like to bite things. If they're furry little animals, they squeal before they die. If it's a robot, they fizz and crackle before shutting down. Sometimes, I'll even bite into a piece of steel just to see how big I can make my toothmarks.

I'm a purple wolfish dog who doesn't like too many things. Except biting stuff, fighting stuff, and being close to my master.

He calls me Treble, and somewhere I know that's my name. I don't like to talk much, and he understands that. But he knows me.

Some people call him Bass. But he's my master. I don't have to talk to him much. I can't talk to him. Not like he can talk with his enemies. Not like he can talk with Wily.

I speak to my master through expressions, gestures, growls and whimpers. And if I'm really angry, I'll even switch to binary to scream at him. But I can't talk. I don't have the speech programs.

That doesn't matter. I'm content just the way I am. I'm Treble. My master is Bass. And that's everything I need to know.

* * *

It was August 7th, 2085, according to what my master told me later. Four years ago, when we were just starting out, we went into Doctor Light's lab and stole some stuff. Some stuff to help make me and my master, Bass, stronger. But also some other stuff…

'Plans'?? Is that what Wily called them…

But it resulted in the thing sleeping inside of that capsule in front of our eyes. Me, and Wily, and my master, and all the Robot Masters stood around, watching on.

It was unnatural, even more so than me and my master…Something about it frightened me. Adorned in gleaming red armor, it seemed born only for the purpose of…

_Madness…_And I growled at it, because it was all I could do. I wanted to destroy it, tear the thing apart, because this feeling deep in my stomach told me this thing was wrong…so very wrong…

But I couldn't destroy it. Wily would never allow it. I obey my master, but even he is a subordinate to Wily…

He and I were still of one mind, one single thought racing between us. I couldn't hear him say it, couldn't read his thoughts, but I knew it, knew he was thinking the exact same thing.

_This THING was brewing with something more dark…maa…malevolent…Than anything ever before…And it scared me…_

And then as my master flatly tells Wily this is wrong, the crazy white haired man turns about and snaps an insult at him.

It hurts his feelings, I understand what Wily is saying…We're beyond the point of doing anything now, Wily has started the cogs of whatever will come…All I can do is nuzzle my master's drooping hand and let him know somebody still cares about him.

And then it awakens. Slowly at first, plodding around in a state more robotic than even the Robot Masters…Wily leads him to his platform and begins to shout out orders…

_AFTER HIM!!_

After who??…And then the thing snaps…

* * *

The thing's gone crazy, just as my master and I thought he would…he's ripping robots apart, but he seems to be intent on killing Wily.

My master barks an order, a mere formality. Already I'm lunging forward with him, at his side in the most desperate fight of our life, the faithful pet…

I'm smaller, smaller than my master. I manage to sneak in underneath the thing's maddening swath and bite onto his leg…I clamp my teeth shut and revel in the feeling of being who I am, a robotic dog who likes to bite things…

The thing screams, but I can't tell if he's angry or in pain…My master is firing at point blank range at him, while I continue to grate and chew on the thing's leg. It seems for a moment we've subdued him…

But then the thing snaps its leg up, and me along with it, right into my master's line of fire.

_No, please, not me master!!_

He stops shooting, but a shot still burns into my side…And I wonder just how smart is this thing…

_Smarter than my master??_

The thing brings its arms down, breaking me free from his leg with a yelp…swinging his freed limb about, he hurls me into my master, sending the both of us flying into a wall.

And then it throws a Robot Master's legs at us…but my master stretches out, and protects me from the blow…

But it's too late…We're shattered, broken, destroyed. There is nothing we can do now, except watch…

The thing is tearing Wily apart…

_I'm afraid…afraid and horrified and sickened…_And I whimper, and I know my master thinks the same…

I also know there's nothing more to be done here…We need help, we need someone as strong as us…maybe even stronger to stop this thing…

"We'll get him soon for this." My master growls at me. I growl back, reciprocating the thought. My turned stomach settles down…Now isn't the time…

And my mind settles once more on thoughts of the battle yet to come, and what I'll rip into pieces…

And we are gone, gone for the only place on all the world that has the help we need.

Tokyo, Japan…More specifically, the home of my master's nemesis…Mega Man…

* * *

We're both in bad shape when we land. But there's no immediate danger, because I know just as well as my master that whenever we've come here before looking for vengeance, they never fired the first shots.

We're right as ever…they huddle in a giant group on the porch, staring out at us warily, but doing nothing. They say something to my master, and he says something back. But then he collapses worse than before, tearing his helmet off and clutching at his head.

_Master…what's wrong, master??_

But somehow he manages to pull himself out of it, turn to them and snap a barking reply. It jars them. I know what my master said…he's angry because they don't believe him.

_Fools, all of them..._

It's sinking into them, they're realizing the dreaded Bass is telling the truth now. By just how we look even emphasizes truth in his words. We've been wounded…and we could have suffered far worse.

Then one of them's running towards Bass, kneeling down beside him with a look of concern over her face.

_Stay away, you…he's MY master, I'm not going to let you hurt him…_

"Down." My master commands wearily. I stop instantly, catching onto the inflection within that one word. This one will not hurt him, or hurt me. This one is here to help him, and I don't need to be protective.

We just stay outside for a while longer, while Bass explains as best he can where that THING came from…and how, by some odd twist of fate, the two of us are partially responsible for his being.

And then comes the shuddering truths as Doctor Light finally leads us all into the deepest underground recess of his laboratory. There, sitting in a corner is a capsule so eerily similar to the one that bore Wily's Thing. But the thing inside this one…I can sense no darkness, no evil. Not a single taint of any negative trait. I'm at ease with this one, yet somehow I also sense he is a Mega Man. And no matter what sort of alliance my master jumps into, I'll always keep a certain level of vengeance for Mega Men. His eyes are closed, and he seems to be sleeping within the dark confines of his sarcophagus.

_Master…what do we do now?? _

He's somehow answered this question already. We must now fight Wily's Thing. To protect Light's Thing.

_Why do I call them things…_

They're not robots…I'm a robot, my master is a robot. These are more than what we are. I can only call them Things.

Mega Man and his friends will fight for Light's Thing, and to stop Wily's Thing from causing further harm. My master fights for his rage…Rage at the thing who's taken everything away from him.

_And what do I fight for…_As I sit on the floor, watching Roll repair my master, I think about that.

Yes, I think…But no answer comes.

_What do I fight for…_

I look up with my eyes, letting my muzzle lie where it is. My master offers no answer, and the question continues to burn through me…

I don't know. I DON'T KNOW. I don't know what I fight for. I just fight. Does everything need a reason?!

Maybe…I let my eyes fall again and begin my shutdown sequence.

_Tomorrow…Maybe I'll know…tomorrow…_

* * *

Somehow, my master's so-called allies managed to finish their goodbyes, and we all left off for where the Thing had landed. He was as still as red and as collected as always...and I still shuddered at the prominent air that flickered off of him. Perhaps the others couldn't see it. I could.

Fused with my master, we were stronger as one. We all opened fire on the Thing…

But it did no good. I knew they were arguing tactics for a bit after that. Something about supershots…But then everything was shattered apart.

The Thing's arm danced in light for a moment…and morphed into a Buster. I felt my master tense up for a moment, almost dreading that the shot might well be heading in our direction.

But it went towards Mega Man, my master's enemy…It struck him hard enough to force his own dog, Rush, to defuse. And then Rush was gone, blown away into dust.

_I know fear…I can be afraid, and of this Thing, I'm so very afraid…_

I can feel my master's thoughts as he worries about MY safety…When I'm so worried about his…Together, we fly down and blast charge into the Thing, sending him tumbling as we fly on.

He recovers too fast for us…his shots are enough my master and I have to disengage from our morphed form. In the instant before we defuse, I feel my master's terror as he thinks of me being blown apart just like Rush was.

_No, not me…NOT YET!!_

I dodge and weave, and Wily's Thing's efforts are all in vain. My master screams for a moment, then all three of them release their supershots, forcing the Thing to stop its firing and dodge. And it does dodge…with so much speed I can't follow.

And then…comes the most foreign words I've ever heard my master utter.

"Mega Man, you head back. And take Treble with you." I blink a few times, for once desperately wishing I could talk like my master does…

_I don't want to leave you!! I don't want to let you die here!!_ _Enough, you've done enough, master! It's their problem now, not ours!! Wily never let us be free, and now when at last the opportunity arrives, you want to throw your life away fighting an impossible battle?!_

Then the shots come raining down on my master and the gray one, Protoman.

_Master…you're hurt…_I whimper and start to walk towards him after the blast, after he's yelled at Mega Man one last time and the Blue Bomber's warped out…Like the coward he is, just running…

_Master, I don't want to go…_

"Get outta here, you stupid mutt!" He screams at me. "Save yourself!" And then, he's said it…

_Master, I can't leave you…you're all I have…_

But his stare is enough. I have to carry out his order…But as I leave, a thought runs ever so clear.

_I've just left him to die…_

_I've left MY MASTER…_

_To die…Alone…_

* * *

Everyone was stunned to see the all too familiar beam of aqua blue light warp down from the sky above and re-coalesce into Mega Man. Duo, Roll, and Auto were standing guard outside by then. And despite everything, the sky was unbelievably clear, with only a thin cloudline rolling in from the west.

"Mega Man?" Duo asked in a concerned voice, his face showing concern. "What happened?"

The Blue Bomber looked from one face to the other, a blank stare his only response before he tore off his helmet and let it drop to the grass beside him. He opened his mouth to speak…

Then shut it and bowed his head. Only Auto had the ability to speak after those five seconds.

"Oh no." He whispered, his own limited AI parameters still showing the dread they all felt. Mega Man finally looked up, his eyes glassy and tearless, yet deserving tears.

Treble warped down a few seconds later. He wobbled back and forth unsteadily on his paws, his own wounds severe enough to cause some pain.

"They're dead." Mega Man said hollowly. As if the statement was a heavy iron club, his knees gave out and he collapsed into a kneeling position. "They told me to leave…Said they were already dead…"

Light stepped outside onto the porch, his own face ashen and streaked with tears.

"I saw." He whispered. "I saw it all, Mega Man. One of my old aero-drone cameras…" He blinked his eyes a few times, then brushed away the tears and sniffled back in his cries. "Protoman, Rush…blown into atoms. And Bass took his own life with a suicide blast."

"Why…" Roll whispered. She lifted her head up and turned to Light, so desperate for her own tears to cry. "WHY?!" Her voice quavered into cracking, her body shook…but no watery drops fell from her face.

It was then that one of the survivors let his feelings be known…the only way he could, the only way he knew.

Treble tensed up every metallic muscle in his body, reared his head back and howled long and mournfully at the sky. As if cursing the fact that it should dare be so sunny on the worst tragedy ever to happen to him.

Nobody there could console him, nobody there could speak words of comfort. Perhaps Treble knew he didn't belong…

And so, whimpering, he left. In his warped beam of light, Treble forever vanished from the only world, the only faces he'd ever known.

Light dabbed at his face with a kleenex, holding Roll tightly as her body continued to shake in her agonized pain. He watched the beam of light streak off, and was remembered of the last thing he saw Bass order Treble to do before blowing himself, the camera, and hopefully, the Demon, into dust.

"Poor creature…" Light sniffled, watching Treble soar off into oblivion.

"He's still following his master's orders."

* * *

_Where do I go now…_

I've felt pain before. I've felt my armor grow singed and melted by the fury of plasma. I've felt my vital systems give way to severe physical trauma. But nothing has prepared me for this…

_Master…Master, why did you leave me?!_

I want to cry out, I want to scream.

_I'm all alone now…I couldn't save my master, he sent me away…_

WHY?! Master…BASS…Don't you see?! My life was serving you, protecting YOU!! Not the other way around!

_You threw it all away…to help THEM…they were our enemies, master!! Why did we help them? In the end, what did it gain you? Acceptance?! LOVE?! Only your death, Bass. You're dead now. DEAD! _

Damn them all, why can't I cry…I want to so badly, I've lost everything now…

_You were the only one who ever cared for me, Bass…Why did you do this??_

What is there left for me now? Rage?? No, it's not my rage…My grief??

_That's it…that's all I have left now. My grief. My anguish. My pain. I just want it all to end…I don't care if there's nothing beyond what I have now. I'd prefer the void over this!!_

But I can't end it, can I…Even now, my mind…Unnnghh…turning against me, forcing me to cease even thinking about…about…

_Suicide…_

_**A robot must act to preserve its own life, unless such actions conflict with the first two laws.**_

I can't think about it, I can't ponder it, I can't do it…

_I've been cursed now, haven't I…Cursed to this life until the end comes for me. I cannot go to it._

Humans…We robots are their children, their creations. But they deprive us of almost everything that makes them unique.

_I want to cry. I cannot. I want to end my pain and suffering, no matter where I might find myself after the act of self destruction. I cannot. _

I've warped…warped to the wildernesses left in Japan. Running, running…

_I wanted to let my master know how much I truly cared for him. I could not. I wanted to protect him from his death…but…I COULD NOT…_

The sun is high in the sky above, and my weakened legs finally give out, causing me to stumble and crash to the ground, lying motionless in a place that nobody would ever find me…

_I can't run anymore, master. I'm tired. I'm so very tired. I want to sleep, sleep forever, leave this living nightmare. I've lost it all, I've lost you…My fault, my fault I didn't stay behind…_

Do humans feel like this?? My circuits threaten to overload, the emotional strain is so intense on them…Must…Body must…rest…

_Master, where do we go from here??_

_No…Before I sleep…must…correct…_

_Bass…_

_Where do I go from here??_

* * *

It was the night of August 8th, 2085 before Treble's weary body finally finished the extensive internal repairs and managed to slow the effects of his emotional trauma. Still, in him the effect was cumulative. Like a person affected with _Xeroderma Pigmentosum_ who would inevitably die of skin cancer or the psychological disorders that came from their skin's inability to repair its cellular damage, Treble's damage to his mind's circuitry would remain behind and slowly alter his demeanor, fragment memories, cause him to possibly even go insane…

But he knew none of that. There was no one to take care of him, no one to comfort him. At last, Treble was alone in the world. Without a home, without a purpose, without his master…without a life.

The moon laughed at him as much as the bright sunny day had, glaring down in its full stage, moonbeams of reflected sunlight so very clear.

Already, the effects of his trauma began to affect him, his thoughts more jumbled than ever before.

But the one conscious thing he held onto was a simple, very animalian instinct.

He warped to Mount Fuji and climbed up to its highest point. And standing there, he reared back onto his rear haunches and howled a long and mournful cry of pain that echoed from the peak and carried even into Tokyo.

Everyone lost interest in Light, Wily, and Mega Man after two years of silence and the subsequent eruption of Mount Fuji in October of 2087. Their trials, their exploits almost became lost as the world once more fell into conflict and chaos, no outside threat for them to rally against.

But even until the dawn of 2118, after Mega Man X and the reploids arrived on Earth, and old Tokyo's location had been close to forgotten and the populace moved to the somewhat more distant New Tokyo…

Tour guides, residents, and wanderers alike all claimed with sadness, a teary eye, and bristling goosebumps that on nights where a full moon stood untarnished by a clear nightshade black sky, the howls of the ghost hound would echo about for miles…

* * *

_So long…so very long now…_

_How long…Can't remember…almost don't care anymore._

I remember…remember a master…

_I lost my master…I was left all alone in the world. I miss my master, that's why I howl every full moon._

I move a little slower almost every day now. My memories are so fuzzy and broken, but I can still remember an image of myself standing proud and untarnished. Not ragged and defeated as I am now. Perhaps some time ago, I was a menacing creature with more rounded features. I know I'm a robot…a robotic dog that's tinted purple. Although there are times I wonder if even that isn't true anymore, if my eyes might be going bad…

_I look like a mere skeleton of what I probably was so long ago. Thinner, more angled, sharp like a knife. But at the same time, I'm weaker, my armor's worn to uselessness, I'm sluggish and archaic._

I must be old…My body's so old and damaged…but I can't remember. I can't remember how old I am anymore.

I can't even remember…

_What's my name…_

Master…You would know…

_If you still were alive…Why, master…why aren't you here with me??_

I'm just wandering from day to day, I have no purpose. No mission. No master.

Alone, discarded, defeated. This is my fate.

And I don't even know if I can accept it or not.

* * *

More years would pass. I found myself wandering away from the wilderness…towards the gleaming lights of buildings made of metal, of people, of noise. I don't remember why I did it, what rational decision I'd made to get there. I still didn't know who I was, couldn't even remember.

But I'm glad I went to the city…

Because it was there he found me.

Sigma wandered through the streets of New Tokyo, a blank stare covering his internal disputes. Everyone…everyone he passed stared at him in horror, disgust or annoyance. Reploids did not…it was only the humans. They seemed to squawk at him, _"You monster! The sight of you sickens us!"_ Sigma clenched his fist in anger. Here he was, assigned and expected to protect their scrawny lives and uphold the law…and all that the humans ever gave him was scorn and mistrust. He almost wanted to choke one of them…their sheer audacity flared his circuits. But then he would calm down and listen to reason. Not only did he have an image to uphold, that not all reploids were bad…but he also had a force to lead.

Just then his head turned as he heard a sound…the baleful wail of a creature in pain. Sigma turned about and plodded down the corridor of the dank alleyway he had entered. And what he saw disgusted him.

Humans…human adolescent boys were torturing a poor and defenseless dog. It was weak and beleaguered, ragged and emaciated. But then a gleam caught his eye and he realized it for what it truly was.

A robotic dog, colored purple with a massive neck plume and a frame that showed pride and power. But now all that Sigma saw was a pack of hooligans torturing this creature.

"Come on, you hound! Get up and fight!" one taunted, waving a baseball bat around. The dog growled angrily and tried to spring up. But another boy brought down a heavy club, smashing him back to earth. Sigma grimaced as he saw the damage being done to the creature…and he could take its pain no more.

With quiet steely determination, Sigma walked up to the horrifying scene and tapped the nearest one on the shoulder.

"Hey man, get the Eff outta here!" the teen growled. Sigma frowned, and then pulled out his beam saber, lighting it up with a flick of the power switch. The all too familiar sound blared into the hallway, bouncing around like an echo that wouldn't die. The boy froze, then slowly turned around.

Sigma stared at him, his face a mask of rage and anger and pent-up frustration. His saber gleamed menacingly, at his side in hand, but ready to spring up and end the teen's life if need be. The teen pulled down his dark glasses and tried to gulp down his fears, but his throat had run dry. Doing the only thing he could, the teen turned about and shakingly tapped the others into an about face. The lot of them suddenly turned from cruel monsters into quivering masses of flesh and fear, and Sigma growled deeply.

"I suggest the lot of you push off…NOW." Sigma suddenly swung his saber in a wide arc as proof, scorching a deep gash into the metallic wall beside him. That was all it took for the demons of destruction to flee, leaving bats, sunglasses and fake Mohawk wigs behind. Sigma sighed, then sheathed his blade. He hated to draw his weapon for anything besides a Maverick's death, but this time the gravity of the situation had warranted drastic measures. Sigma knelt down beside the whimpering dog and lifted its muzzle with one hand. The mighty beast looked at him with clouded eyes, then swallowed and began to lick Sigma's hand.

Sigma smiled warmly, but he knew the creature was in sorry shape. The truth of it was, the dog was many times older than Sigma may have guessed…for lying, wounded before the Hunter was a relic of the past…Treble, the mighty fighting dog of Bass, the robotic nemesis of the famed Mega Man.

Some would have called it fate that such a link would occur, but all Sigma saw was a wounded creature with intelligence that needed his attention.

"Well, boy." Sigma chuckled. "I suppose we should get you back to my base. Doctor Cain should be able to fix you up. Maybe you could join me when I got destroy mavericks, eh?" Treble had been programmed to recognize certain commands, and DESTROY was one of them. Even with almost every last of his memories scrambled, his mind so far gone he'd effectively forgotten who he was and why he existed, he remembered that much. Instantly, a gleam of happiness filled his eyes, and he ruffed softly in response. Sigma laughed. "So you like that, huh boy? Hmm…" Sigma took his other hand and scratched Treble behind the purple mane of his beck, and Treble growled happily in response, crooning his neck towards the soothing and loving hands of his new master.

"Boy...that won't do for a name. We need something special…something that says you're tough. How about…Velguarder?" Treble turned his wolflike snout towards Sigma, and let out a loud howl of approval. Sigma smiled again.

"Velguarder it is then. Come on Velguarder…let's get you home."

* * *

At last, I had a master again!! Even though I barely remembered my old one, I could still make comparisons…

_My old master was shorter than my new one, and not as physically overwhelming a presence. My old master wore a helmet, he wasn't bald. My old master used some kind of gun on his arm…not a fancy sword of plasma._

But I wanted a master, needed a master…And soon I grew to love my new one.

Sig…ma…_My master…_

I was introduced to a brand new world, completely different to the wilderness and mere torturous survival I'd been a part of for close to forever. I was surrounded by people like my master, people who cared for me, fixed me up, almost made me brand new! I was alive, I was rebuilt, I was intact.

_Somehow, I had been designed for combat. The person who repaired me…Doctor…Cain??…had said as much. I wonder if they ever knew who I might be. I had no clue myself. But then I found it easy to forget the already forgotten past, and focus on the present._

_Sigma was my Master. Sigma was the prime leader of a group of reploids known as Maverick Hunters._

I was a robot. Everyone knew this, even me. But somewhere along the line, they'd developed a new kind of robot. A robot that bordered on human. A Thing…Yes, a Thing…_God, why does that term seem so familiar…_Known as a reploid. My master Sigma was a reploid. Everyone in his Unit, the 1st Unit, was reploids. Chill Penguin, Spark Mandrill, Storm Eagle, Flame Mammoth, Boomer Kuwanger, Launch Octopus, Armored Armadillo, Sting Chameleon, and even that mysterious helmeted guy Vile…They were all reploids.

Somewhere along the line there were reploids who began to get buggy…defective…These were called Mavericks, from what Sigma bothered to explain to me.

And he was a Maverick Hunter. And Maverick Hunters fought Mavericks.

It was simple then. And then I began to question my past again…

Because of them.

* * *

"So Sigma, taking the new dog for a walk?" Came an unusual voice in the Maverick Hunter Headquarters. Sigma paused his easygoing gait to turn around and see where it had come from. He found himself looking back on a smiling reploid-like creation known as Mega Man X, his blue armor he'd been found in still a part of his daily attire.

Velguarder turned about and looked at the newcomer as well, chuffing for a moment in obvious scorn. He recognized instantly that the newcomer wasn't a warrior, just by his scent. But then something else clicked in his mind, his archaic, scrambled mind…

"Never you mind, X. I thought I'd take him to the training facilities and introduce him to some of the Maverick Hunters." Sigma said calmly, never once losing the steely air of ice in his voice. Velguarder took a tentative step forward and snorted again, his dark slanted eyes burning into the blue one.

X paused, then took a step back in nervous anticipation.

"Ehh…Sigma, your dog's looking at me funny." Sigma blinked a few times, then grinned and folded his arms.

"Well, well. He doesn't do that with too many people. Of course, he's got an uncanny sensory system."

"He's just a robot, right?" X asked uneasily. Sigma frowned, his eyes burning through the scars he'd left across his eyes.

"In name only. I don't know where Velguarder came from before I found him. But he's smart, X. Almost as smart as you or me. Definitely older." Sigma folded his arms. "Usually when he gets this interested in something, it's either because it smells different from everything else he's encountered or he views it with a certain level of hostility and misgiving. Speaking of which, Velguarder, this is Mega Man X. He was made by Doctor Thomas Light in his final years, and he remembers nothing about his past." Velguarder seemed to think over it for a moment, and then warbled something in unintelligible binary language.

X blinked a few times, then turned to Sigma puzzled.

"Whaddid he just say?" Sigma stared at his dog in amazement for a few long seconds in the hallway before turning to X, an unusually blank stare across his face.

"He said…that makes two of us." X paled a bit at the translation. "Let me continue, Velguarder. Mega Man X is the prototype, the model from which all other reploids, including me, were created. In a sense, he's sort of our father." X rolled his eyes at the comment.

"Sigma, you know I hate it when reploids call me that." Sigma blinked a few times more.

"Not as much as when Dorian called you mommy." X drew a hand across his face.

"Sigma, humor is so wasted on you."

In the meantime, Velguarder had taken a few more tentative steps forward, and had begun to sniff every part of X his muzzle could reach. At long last, he finished his smelling scans and took a few steps back, letting his paws clack against the floor. He sat upright and stared at X for a long while…almost with a quiet reverence, or as if he was thinking of something long and hard, trying to recall an ancient, lost memory from the deepest recesses of his fragmented mind. He whined for a moment, cocking his head to the side...

And then something within him snapped…and he began to growl at X long and hard.

Sigma barked a command, silencing Velguarder at once. The robotic dog heeled to Sigma's side, who merely gave an apologizing shrug to X before walking the both of them onwards to the training facilities of the MHHQ.

X stood there for a few moments longer, silently pondering what course of events had fired off inside of Velguarder's mind. The color returned to his cheeks, but even then it did nothing to stop the goosebumps from riding up and down his spine.

"God, that was screwy." He finally exhaled, turning about. He was eager to go as far away from Sigma's new pet as possible.

"It's almost like the pooch was trying to remember something…And having me around triggered a very bad synapse."

* * *

"Honestly, Velguarder, I don't know what's gotten into you." Sigma said quietly, knowing that his new faithful pet had no trouble hearing him. An unusual silence hung in the air between them, which did little to help dissuade Sigma's doubts about him.

"I've seen you just rip things apart. And I've seen you be meek. But never what you just did with X." Velguarder plodded along, either too lost in his own thoughts to speak up or simply ignoring the line of questioning. "And what did you mean…That makes two of us?"

Sigma paused and kneeled down in front of his faithful pet, looking at him. Most of his sharp, almost razor blade like look came from the enhancements and repairs Doctor Cain had given the poor pooch. When he'd first met Velguarder, the dog had been battered and beaten, his armor worn through and his strength almost completely gone. Still, Sigma doubted very much that how he looked now was anything like what he looked like…back before…

"Velguarder…just where did you come from?" Sigma breathed. The purple servant blinked its angled optics a few times, and then spoke a clipped sentence in binary before whimpering sadly.

_"I don't know."_

They kept walking after that, eager to keep the appointment with the training facilities. And lo and behold, one of the first people that greeted them was a new recruit with red armor, a repaired helmet and an easygoing grin.

"Yo, boss dude!" Zero hollered, waving his Buster about at the end of the targeting range. "I see you brought your pet with you."

Sigma nodded and looked down at Velguarder, ready to introduce him.

It was then he noticed that the metallic bristles that composed Velguarder's fur was on end, and that the dog seemed frozen to the floor…

* * *

_I know this one, too…_

_The other one…Like I'm recalling him from a dream, a serene face sleeping inside of a capsule, while we all look down on him._

But who was the rest of them there with me then…

_Master Sigma called him Mega Man X…_

_Blast it, why does that seem so familiar…MEGA MAN…_

_Somehow, a part of me I've forgotten looked at him as an enemy…not my enemy, but my master's enemy…_

_Not Sigma, though…my other master, my first master…the one whose name I can't even recall…_

So many unknowns, I've forgotten almost everything. And Sigma can't help me to remember.

_Who am I…And why did I see Mega Man X as an enemy??_

But X…Isn't like this one now…this red one…different, special…

_I KNOW HIM…Master save me, but there's some part of me that remembers his face, his smile, his Buster and his blood red armor…And I'm afraid, so very afraid…_

BLAST IT ALL, THE MEMORIES ARE SO CLOSE, AND I CAN'T REMEMBER!!

_But this one…I know I've met this one before, just like I've met Mega Man X…in another place…another time…_

_And in this one I sense an aura of darkness…there is evil in him, an air that causes me to freeze in terror…Like something that courses through his veins, an evil spirit that hides away until it can take control…_

_I can almost see him standing there, laughing so many years ago…a glitched memory file tries to come up, a blurred image of a red figure standing and laughing while chaos and death is bred all around him…_

_It's the same one…Master save me…THE SAME ONE…_

_How long ago was it when we met, your monstrous THING?? How long ago did I hear your sadistic laugh…_

_I can't remember, but I know it's there…he and I are connected somehow. But he is not my master. He is my master's enemy._

_Forget the pain, forget the fear I feel surging through my every circuit…We have met before, you…The last time, you took something precious from me…_

_Something more precious than anything else…I almost see it, a blurred figure in black and golden trim…_

_MASTER…_

_Master, he was the one that killed…_

_NOOO!!_

* * *

"Sigma, what's up with your pooch?" Zero muttered, taking a wary step back from the robotic hellhound. Sigma too was stunned at Velguarder's response, gingerly reaching for the stasis-inducing neuro-tazer he kept with him.

"He got freaked out around X as well." Sigma mumbled quietly, almost too quietly for the newest Maverick Hunter recruit to hear.

Velguarder had been frozen to the floor, every metallic bristle of his fur arched back in terror or surprise…

But then it all ended. With an unholy howl, Velguarder opened his mouth wide and sprayed Zero with a disastrous swath of his flamethrower. The blast was intense enough that it sent Zero sprawling backwards and skidding along the floor.

The howl continued even as Velguarder lunged forth in the air, diving towards the stunned and injured Zero. Every Maverick Hunter in the training room was frozen in shock and horror as one of their own was attacked by the crazed Hellhound of Sigma.

But Velguarder only made it so far into his death lunge before two tiny diodes embedded themselves through his armor and released an ungodly charge of electricity. Velguarder yelped in pain before plunging to the floor, every leg of his body twitching in pain. Finally, his eyes grew dull and finally snapped off…He'd dropped into stasis.

Still, nobody in the room moved. Save for a gasping Sigma, who lowered his trembling hand and the neuro-tazer attached to it downwards before flinging it against the nearby wall. His body shook as he stared first at the motionless Velguarder, and then at the stunned and utterly confused Zero.

"Are you all right?" Sigma rasped at Zero. The Crimson Hunter looked up, blinking a few times before his wits came back to him.

"Yeah…I'll be all right. Guess I should check in with Hazil and get my armor repaired…that flamethrower leaves a mark." Zero managed to get to his feet, then stared down at Velguarder in disbelief. "God, is that thing Maverick?"

Sigma's deep red eyes bored into Zero, hands clenched at his sides.

"No." He breathed tersely. "Velguarder isn't." He pronounced his sentence as if to say that someone else might be. A silence hung in the air before Sigma shook his head. "Velguarder isn't a reploid, Zero. He's a robot. And every last one of his circuits checked out all right. Plenty of glitched memory, but nothing that would cause him to just go haywire." Zero brushed back his singed blond mass of hair, cringing at the follicle damage.

"So why the frack did he go and try to rip my head off?"

Unconsciously, Sigma reached a hand up to his face…his trembling fingers brushing against the two jagged marks across his eyes. The synthskin had been repaired after that mission, the paint marks he had left as reminder…

_Garma's Unit…wiped out by the 'crazy red Maverick'…_

_He'd never told Cain the true nature of how Zero came to be in their midst, as if some compulsion drove him to keep the secret…Everything had taken on a darker shade after…_

"Velguarder has the most uncanny sensory system I've ever seen." Sigma continued slowly. "It's almost like he can sense a person in more ways than their smell, their looks, and their physical statistics. In a sense, he can judge a person's character." Sigma lowered his hand from the scars on his eyes and looked at Zero, a burning question revived in him…one he was afraid to ask. "Perhaps Velguarder saw something in you…something that frightened him so badly he went to attack."

"God, that's just nuts." Zero mumbled. "I'm gonna go get repaired then, boss. And keep a closer eye on that pooch of yours, huh?"

Zero walked out of the training room, glad to be free of the crisis.

Gingerly, Sigma picked up his sleeping pet in his arms and walked out as well, ignoring the burning stares of disbelief from everyone in the room.

He ignored them all, because his mind was focused on questions that overrode everything.

_Velguarder…just where did you come from…_

* * *

Who am I…Master Sigma calls me Velguarder, and that is who I am now, what I am now…

_But before…there was a before, in everything I've forgotten, in all that I see only by flashes of recollection…I had another master then, my first master, my true master…_

_And he was taken away from me…by the red one, the red THING…_

More of it comes back to me slowly. I sleep, I feel sleep, but here in the haze of stasis, can I see more…

_Master, help me to remember…_

So fuzzy, so degraded, gone, corrupted…I've lost my past, and now as I seek to find it, I find that the years have denied me what I scream to know…

_But there's a part of it that appears, a clearer memory…one that must have been newer than the others, one that somehow survived the ravages of my mind's blender…_

_It's a man…or a figure of a man…He isn't tall, he stands short…and he is old, but his wrinkled arms and hands are taut and drawn, for he has used them all his life…_

_His eyes are wild…_

And his hair…

_Even wilder, outstretched like his hands…and his laugh…IT'S THE THING'S LAUGH…Oh Master save me…It's the same laugh, a different person, but the same laugh that makes me tremble even now…_

There's something behind him…An emblem, an icon, a symbol…Something, something I can't make out exactly…

_No…Stasis is beginning to slip from me, I feel my mind try to tell me I must wake up…_

NOT YET!! I NEED TO SEE THE SYMBOL!!

_A circle…a very fuzzy circle with four jagged lines crisscrossed across it, hanging over one edge and somehow connected in a…letter…_

_Is it a V…_

_No…Not a V, like two V's…_

_A…_

* * *

Velguarder's eyes snapped open, and he found himself blinking and staring about the interior of Sigma's room.

Sigma was there, sitting on the edge of his sleep capsule while a gray haired man in a blue colored robe of some sort sat down in the easy chair.

It was Doctor Cain, of course.

"Welcome back, Velguarder." Doctor Cain said quietly, rocking back and forth with no concern. As he'd expected, Velguarder showed no malice towards him, and obediently picked himself up and walked over to sit in front of Sigma. Gently, Sigma reached a hand down and ruffled Velguarder's ears.

"You've had quite a day, to say the least." Cain grumbled, staring at the two of them. "Sigma, you are my best reploid, and leader of the Maverick Hunters. You I trust unequivocally." Sigma gave a brief nod of his head, then waited for Cain to continue. "However, Velguarder's conduct today has raised more than a little tension at the MHHQ. If he were reploid, the instant sentence would be death for turning Maverick."

"But?" Sigma asked quietly, his giant red eyes burning into his creator with a pleading stare. Cain sighed, then stood up and walked over to Velguarder, rubbing his ears as well. Velguarder allowed the action, not even growling. Even at his pronounced age, Cain had no problems walking about without difficulty, without use of a walker or walking stick.

"Velguarder is of course, a very special case. He's a robot, for one. Which means any glitch he has should be able to be diagnosed without fault. But Hazil's most recent scans showed no drastic flaws in his mind's circuitry, aside from the fact his long term memory circuits are so scrambled he's probably clueless about his past. This, combined with the fact that he is your pet, Sigma, sways me towards letting him live."

"Thank you." Sigma sighed, instantly relieved. Velguarder offered no response. Cain lifted a finger.

"But even though I'll let you get away with most anything Sigma, there's still too much bad air about Velguarder. People aren't comfortable letting him roam free. Thus, even though Velguarder will be allowed to keep his life, he's effectively under house arrest from this point forward. Unless he's on a mission with you and the 1st Unit, he is restricted to your room." Cain's eyes twinkled in honest sadness. "I'm sorry, Sigma…that's the best I can do."

Sigma looked down at Velguarder, then looked at Cain.

"I know, doc. And thank you." Cain nodded his head, and then slipped out of the room.

In the cool blue light, Sigma took Velguarder's muzzle in both his hands and stared deeply into his pet's eyes.

"Velguarder, I don't know you as well as I'd like to. But I know that something about X and Zero today made you snap." Velguarder blinked again, then whined and pulled away. Sigma reached out to stop him from escaping, but thought better of it as he saw his faithful pet curl up into the corner, still whining.

"I can't see what you're thinking, Velguarder. You have to talk to me." Sigma continued quietly, dropping his hands into his lap.

The purple armored dog looked up and stared into Sigma's eyes. He thought for a moment, and then finally spoke in binary.

_"I don't know who I am, Sigma."_

"You're Velguarder." Sigma spoke back, his tension eased by the fact Velguarder was finally speaking to him. Still, the mutt shook his head as he lay there, tucking his tail up underneath him.

_"No, not now…who I was before."_ Velguarder shook his head back and forth, in a motion that was all too human…all too akin to intelligence beyond mere robot. _"I can't remember, master. I can't!!"_

"Does it hurt you that much?" Sigma asked quietly, settling back some.

_"Wouldn't it hurt you? To forget who you are?" _Velguarder argued, a tinge of bitterness seeping into his voice. But Sigma was unfazed by the retort.

"You're a robot, Velguarder. Because of that, you live. If you were reploid like me, you would have been destroyed on sight. Or if not that, exposed to a Neural Eraser for a complete memory wipe. For this, you should feel lucky."

_"When you are haunted at night by the visions of a long forgotten nightmare, THEN you can tell me I'm lucky." _Velguarder snapped.

Neither one spoke for a moment after that. Empty silence was their only communication, until Sigma's impatient hands reached up to the scar marking across his eyes.

"Just what made you attack Zero like that today?" Sigma asked cautiously. Velguarder thought about the question long and hard, then shook his head.

_"He frightened me…And for a moment, I thought that…"_ Velguarder shook his head again and stopped. Sigma closed his eyes, letting Velguarder's stumbling response sink in.

"You have the most unbelievable sensory perception I've seen in a robot, Velguarder. Could you actually sense something within him that caused you to be afraid?"

Velguarder seemed to almost be in pain as he thought it over, then nodded sharply.

Sigma drew in a sharp breath, then stood up and paced over to stand beside his pet.

"You had accurate reason to be frightened, Velguarder. Before Zero was a Maverick Hunter, he was Maverick."

Velguarder's eyes burned in surprise, and he stood up, looking at his master in confusion.

Sigma's face had darkened as he'd uttered those words…and for a moment, Velguarder thought he'd sensed something in his master that was off…something unnatural, filled with malice and rage…But it vanished just as quickly.

"Yes, Velguarder. You should know the truth of how Zero joined us." Sigma sighed, walking back to his capsule and plopping inside. "Garma's Unit had been sent to deal with a rather fierce Maverick attack in the Southwestern United States. But they were completely destroyed, torn apart by a single 'crazy red Maverick'. It didn't end there, though. I went to avenge Garma's death. And I ended up fighting him. Or as he later called himself, ZERO." Sigma rubbed at his eyes, shaking his head at the painful memory. "I was stronger in the beginning…but by the fight's end, he had sliced one of my arms clean off, and given me these scars." Sigma pointed to his face. "Were it not for the fact that he somehow fell into a screaming fit, grasping onto his head in obvious pain, I might well have died there, just another victim of the 'crazy red Maverick.' As it stood, I had enough opportunity to deliver a powerful blow that stunned him cold. And then we took him back here, repaired him, and woke him up…but this time, he was completely sentient. Before, he had been almost a DEMON in how he walked, how he smiled, how he fought. Now…he's just another reploid." Sigma shook his head. "And the craziest part of it all is…nobody knows that Zero is the 'crazy red Maverick' that wiped out all of Garma's Unit."

_"You didn't kill him!?" _Velguarder barked shrilly. Sigma's eyes danced in uncertainty, then he finally nodded.

"Yes…I don't know why I did it, I don't even know now…but something stopped me from killing him then, something stopped me from revealing his true nature to everyone at the MHHQ. And save for the two Hunter scouts outside of that fight who I met, both of which are now dead because of a mission only one day later after that, I am the only person that knows." Sigma glanced at Velguarder. "And now you."

Velguarder sat back down, then curled up.

"Velguarder, are you going to be all right?" Sigma asked, concern obvious in his voice. "Is there anything I can do to help?"

_"Nobody can help me now, master." _Velguarder said back sadly. _"This is something I have to solve myself."_

Sigma nodded slowly, then reached down and ruffled his ears.

"I've got to get back to work now. Just promise me, Velguarder…"

_"Yes?"_

"If you need someone to talk to, somebody just to lean against while you're crying, I'm here." Velguarder cut out a short staccato series of barks, that might have been laughs.

_"Sigma, you've said it yourself. I'm a robot. I can't cry. No matter how much I want to."_

Sigma nodded, his usual sneer gone for a concerned nod.

"I'm sorry, Velguarder." With that, he left, the hydraulic door hissing shut behind him.

Velguarder lay there for a few moments more, glad to finally be alone. Glad to at last be able to focus on his own problems, his own inner torments and lost memories, without the distractions of others.

_You gave me back my life, Sigma._

_Now I have to figure out what I did with it._

* * *

Sigma wouldn't be back for two more hours yet, Velguarder noted. He'd managed to turn on Sigma's desktop computer linkup, and with much difficulty, proceed to operate it using a touchscreen input system with an extended claw.

He'd figured out the basics of how to get in and around the computer system. Being robot, it seemed like second nature. It was only his awkward input system that got in the way. He could ask Sigma for help, but…

_No._ This was his task.

He opened up a drawing program, and painstakingly tried to recall the fuzzy symbol from his dream.

_A circle…Four jagged lines, connected at their points…Like two V's…_

It took him four minutes to draw it, going as slow as he could, trying to perfect every fuzzy detail as best he could.

He saved it to the temporary folder, then brought up the MHHQ's search engine.

_**Access symbol and logo database.**_ He typed in slowly, cursing at himself as he corrected three errors in the sentence.

A new window popped up, with a few simple lines of text, an escape icon, an enter icon, and a file upload box.

**Please input your search parameters.**

Carefully, Velguarder brought up the temporary file and loaded it into the file comparison box. His trembling claw reached up and punched the screen's **Identify** icon.

It whirred through the database, eliminating everything except for the circular ones.

It shuffled through Burger King logos, gas station signs, and even gigantic doughnuts with text splayed across them. But then the program locked onto one…just one…

It was a neon purplish pink, standing out starkly in comparison to the others.

Velguarder froze solid when he saw it…

_Oh my Master…_

A circle…with a jagged W splayed across it.

**98 probability of your logo search: Positive identification as symbol of Dr. Wily.**

_Hell and Heaven damn me…_ Velguarder began to whine, unconsciously and without the knowledge he was doing so. It was painful…but familiar, all too strikingly familiar…

Using what little measure of control he had left as his mind began to blur from the strain, he punched his claw down and shut off the computer, erasing any evidence of his search…He didn't want anyone to know what he'd discovered, not now…

And then he sunk to the floor, shivering and whimpering as his memories took over, at last reconstructing themselves, taking over and drowning him out.

Velguarder's past didn't come in a steady trickle.

It washed over him like a dam.

* * *

Sigma arrived back in his room hours later, silently cursing the extended shift and the stupid greenhorns that had caused it.

He froze in the doorway as he found himself staring at the unsettling sight of a trembling Velguarder, lying limp on his side on the floor by Sigma's desk.

"Velguarder!" Sigma said sharply, running to his pet's side. Gently, he lifted the robotic dog's head, blinking in fear. "Come on, speak to me…"

The creature stirred to life, its eyes slowly snapping back into focus. And then he gently licked Sigma's hand.

The reploid sighed in visible relief.

"Bad dream, huh?"

_"A nightmare." _Velguarder said quietly, in his usual chirped binary.

"At least you snapped out of it."

_"One reality for another. Who's to say which is better??"_ Velguarder replied even quieter yet. Sigma picked himself up and shook his head.

"Just promise me you're doing better now." Velguarder gave a nod of his head and curled up into his corner.

Sigma settled down with his pile of reports to be filled out. And as Velguarder stared at the wall, a single torturous though ran through his mind.

_Sigma…If you had known what I know about Zero…_

_You would have killed him then and there…_

* * *

Things were quiet for a long while after that. Sigma had his Maverick Hunting duties to attend to, and I was confined to his room when I wasn't off destroying aberrant reploids.

In that search, I had at last reclaimed my past. _My bloody, nightmarish past…_

Here, I was Velguarder. But in another life…another age…

_I had been Treble._

It had been painful. All those memory files had been fragmented, ignored, forgotten and fried by more than thirty years. They had still been there…they had just been out of my reach.

Until I met X and Zero. Seeing them was all it took to trigger the memory cascade. Another robot might have gone insane, simply shorted out. But not me. I was taught to survive. As a result, I stood whole. A twisted whole.

Time is a wonderful teacher. I was different now than I was then. My brain was less structured than a robot fresh from the line, freer to some extent. I wasn't as limited. It could have very well killed me, but it didn't.

_I'm alive…But so are they._

X and Zero. I haven't met them again since that first day. But I know they're around, just as they know I still exist.

_I hate them both. I hate them because I must, because it's all I can do._

Someone might argue against me on that. But the both of them have ruined my life. The life I had before. And the one I have now is no better.

I hate Mega Man X because it was HIS worthless hide that Mega Man and the others were protecting. While Bass and I had another goal in mind, we ended up fulfilling their objective. And Bass is no longer here with me. I hate Mega Man X because his creation gave rise to Wily's Thing…a Demon I now know is called Zero in this age. If X had never come into being, Wily would have never built Zero, Zero would have never…

I hate Mega Man X because his mere existence gave rise to the events that shattered our lives to pieces. And he is a MEGA MAN. My enemy. My Master's enemy.

I hate Zero all the more though. His life bred nothing but chaos. He destroyed everything that had meaning to me. He left me nothing but a shattered life, a shattered crystal reality. Wily built Zero because he thought Bass was inferior. But Bass never once lifted a finger to destroy Wily. Stop his plans at times, yes…but nothing compared to what Zero did. Wherever that Damned red Thing walks, destruction follows.

I want to destroy them both. But here in this time, they work for the same organization as Sigma and I do.

And so it was. I'd regained my past, but I could do nothing about it. Not as I was. Not as my master was.

And then…

Fate seemed to smile on me then.

* * *

June 4th, 2118. Remember that date. Undoubtedly, it will be placed in history books for years to come. Along with October 15th, 2087, and April 10-14, 2117. A date you won't find in history books is August 8th, 2085. That's my memorial. That is when we fought against Zero. And lost.

But June 4th…That's when the entire world changed. Their world, at least. Sigma called it "Reploid Independence Day". Beyond all belief of anyone else, Sigma somehow convinced every last one of the reploids in his 1st Unit to go along with him. Sigma had told me to go on ahead and wait in the Rogumer, which I did. And then they all arrived, and we blasted our way out.

It was only later that night as we rampaged through New Tokyo that any force arrived to stop us. They'd hit the Maverick Hunters hard. I had thought it odd at first…Weren't we Maverick Hunters…

_Of course, Sigma told me then what had happened. In the purest sense, he and his men had gone "Maverick." But more different than that. They would free their entire race from humanity's iron grip. After months of suffering, the reploid race would be freed from domination!!_

But then that was their perogative. Not mine. Sigma was my master, but he didn't decide my goals for me. No, those had been set in stone long before.

I only cared about this First Maverick Uprising for one reason. It meant I would at last be able to fight Zero when he came to put a stop to us, as he inevitably would, being the next for the shot at command at the MHHQ.

But even more satisfying in my boiling blood was when Sigma told me with gritted teeth that Mega Man X was working with Zero as well. X had become a Maverick Hunter. I would get the chance to fight him as well…

Defeating them would bring closure to my present. But it did nothing to solve my past. To accomplish that would mean doing something else…returning to a place I only now was beginning to recall as if from a dream.

And so, it was on the 12th of June that I went to Sigma, and explained as curtly as I could I needed to get out on my own. And that I'd need a certain gadget from the armory stores as well.

Perhaps Sigma had his mind on other things, perhaps he saw in my eyes something deeper, something more important to me than his own goals. And I was his loyal servant. Of course he said I could.

_But no matter what caused it, I was grateful. I left the world of Mavericks and Maverick Hunters and reploids behind. In a flash of warp energy, I was gone._

_And where I went, Velguarder had no place. Only Treble belonged._

* * *

The facility was dark when Treble arrived. But it responded at once to his binary language command and barely remembered code clearance, lighting up as best as it could. Even then, the lights seemed to gasp in their final moments before death.

It was older, degraded by more than thirty years of aging. A stale, stank air blew through the entire complex. An air rank with more than dust and odors. Time had stood still in Wily's final Fortress, because it had nowhere else to go.

Velguarder--Treble--walked through the corridors, aware of his memory pathways rebuilding themselves at an astounding rate. Every step was a surge of recollection, and every dimmed pathway the reality to his nightmares. Empty and hollow, the Fortress seemed to moan like a ghost, its foul gasps of air permeating every last centimeter of darkness.

Velguarder at last found his way to the room he never thought he would lay eyes on again…wide and deep enough to hold the Death Rogumer, it spoke of more sorrow and emptiness than any other room. And Velguarder--once more Treble as he stood in this place, knew well why.

It was here that Wily's Thing had been born. Wily's Demon. The menace that would later be called Zero. Here was where Treble and his master, the long dead Bass had fought the Thing for the first time.

Zero's Capsule lay not far off. Its transparent shield covering was shattered to uselessness by some force, a force that appeared not to have come from outside the capsule…but from within…And laying strewn across the entire floor was the remains of countless Robot Masters that Treble had called ally. As he walked into the unmarked open gravesite, Treble did not avert his eyes. He did not feel sorrow. These he had already felt once. And he never wanted to feel them again.

It was then in the slowly dimming lights, lights giving out because of a long overworked power source, that Treble noticed something else. A corpse he had not seen before.

As he approached it, he realized why.

It was organic. It was HUMAN.

It was the long skeletonized remains of the infamous Dr. Albert William Wily. The trademark pants and lab coat had disintegrated underneath his skeleton, leaving only a few stubborn scraps of yellowed fabric to lie fragile and ready to collapse into dust upon what had once been his chest.

His arms, even his legs had all been broken painfully. But a closer examination by Treble showed it had been head trauma that had killed Wily. His skull had been crushed in on the sides, and whole chunks of bone were missing at the back of his head.

Treble was beyond revulsion anymore. He and Bass had warped out before they could watch Zero destroy Wily completely, but he now knew that not much longer after they had vanished into the stratosphere, Zero had slammed his hands together on the sides of Wily's face and effectively forced his brains out.

_"Like crushing a grape."_ He muttered blithely, to no one in particular. He felt no sorrow, no remorse for Wily's death. Wily had brought Zero to life. Zero had gone on to deprive Treble of his life, had destroyed his master. Wily deserved to die for his sins of creation.

And then, that was that. After countless years of wandering, of wondering, of barely clinging onto life, Velguarder had regained his past, now knew why he hated and feared Zero, knew why he despised X. The past had caught up to him. Or rather, the future had marched on. A future that X and Zero belonged to.

Treble was nothing but a mere relic now. A shard of the past that didn't belong. But Treble had one last thing to do before he could pass away into the shadows.

He shrugged off the heavy cylinder from his back, at last able to be free of the dead weight. It gleamed bright in the dim rays of yellow, if only because it wasn't old like everything else in this haunted place.

It was a medium grade plasma explosive…everything within the blast's radius would be atomized, no matter if it was metal or ground or Wily's skeleton. Everything outside the radius would survive. And there would be no fallout.

Painstakingly punching at the weapon's outer controls with a single claw, Treble armed the device, set the timer for ten minutes, and activated it.

But he did not move. Not right away. He didn't warp out. He turned to Zero's hated capsule and howled at it…a painful howl full of rage and bitterness.

_"DAMN YOU ZERO!!"_ He screamed. His systems activated and he belched fire until the capsule began to burn. Then and only then did he activate his warp generator and leave Wily's Fortress.

For the last time.

The explosion was spectacular, a semispherical fireball that blossomed from the deep buried earth and Fortress concealed…A Fortress at last destroyed. In the night, Treble reared back on his haunches and howled. Howled for all those who had died he had cared for.

It was a long and mournful howl, a Howl For The Ages. One age had long ago ended, and another was only now beginning.

Wearied, but at last resolved with himself and his past, Treble turned about and walked away, speaking to himself.

_"Never again." _He breathed. _"Never again will you spawn such evil, Wily. You're dead. Your age is dead. Bass is dead. Now only I and the Demon live."_ His pace sped up, determination boiling within him.

_"Treble is dead. He died with that Fortress." _He turned back about, looking to the hollow crater and the shrinking mass of white hot plasma fury that had claimed the final unchecked remnant of the age of Mega Man. _"Only Velguarder remains." _

And that was all that could be said.

* * *

Sigma noticed that Velguarder walked more confidently, more assured of who he was. The hound trotted to him, then sat down and looked out to the sea's edge, and the Fortress being built on the high cliff on the island of Hokkaido.

"Did you find what you were looking for, boy?" Sigma asked. Velguarder bobbed his head only once, his eyes still lost out somewhere beyond the waves. "You found your past? Your true identity?" Sigma continued. Velguarder chose to do more than bob his head, resorting to binary to speak.

_"The past is dead, Sigma. Who I was is dead."_

"Then what did this little trip of yours solve?!" Sigma said irritably.

_"I know who I am now. And I know what I'm doing here." _

"Which is?" Sigma retorted.

_"I am the bygone relic of a lost age." _Velguarder uttered. _"The man I once called Master is dead. I'm the only one left, Sigma. I can't regain that, and I can't return to it."_

"So your last option is…"

_"I am here, Sigma. For better or worse, I am who I must be. I am Velguarder, forever so. And I will fight with you. Fight against Zero and Mega Man X. Fight because it is all I can do now." _

"And so here you are…and I am your master."

_"No." _Velguarder barked. _"No one can call me master now." _Sigma's eyes darkened at the comment, until Velguarder continued. _"But…you can call me friend."_ Velguarder extended a paw.

Sigma shook it firmly and nodded.

"And so time moves on." He looked out to the sea as well, lost in his own thoughts. Yet for a brief moment, they paralleled Velguarder's.

"Before this fight is done, Zero and Mega Man X will be dead at my feet."

And Velguarder didn't argue with that.

* * *

The days of June passed by quickly. Even though Sigma's Fortress was being built as fast as possible, delays and setbacks were commonplace. Long before Zero, X, and whoever else had survived at the MHHQ figured out where our base of operations was, they had cut off our every supply line. Metal from Flame Mammoth, our only airship with the now dead Storm Eagle lost forever, stolen goods from the harbor ports, and raw materials from Armored Armadillo's mine. We lost all of these sources of materials and supplies, thanks to their aggravating efforts. Yes, we were enraged. It made us hate them all the more.

But at last I'd found someone else who hated them as much as I did.

And then it was June 19th. On the eve of the Fortress's completion, Zero and X finally arrived at our door, tipped off by a wayward comm signal that had been intercepted between Sigma and Sting Chameleon.

_Here they were…_

Night was falling quickly now. The Fortress pulled itself free from the cliffside and hovered up into the air, heading out to the bay as if to not allow Zero and X entry.

_That was Sigma's doing. He hated them…but he was afraid of them._

He still had a life to live for. All I had now was an undying hatred that had sustained me into the dawn of the age of reploids.

By some unbelievable stroke of luck, Zero was dead long before they ever got to the Second Ring. He'd committed suicide, double Buster overload…

_To save X…To save MEGA MAN X…_

I couldn't stop but laugh at it, despite the fact it meant I would never get the chance to kill Zero myself and avenge my Master's death.

In 2085, Zero had been sent out to DESTROY Mega Man X. Now in 2118, he sacrificed his own life to preserve X's.

The Demon had changed. We had all changed. And in the end, the fight didn't concern lofty moralistic goals. It was all about our hatred. That's the purest fight, you see…Where your only reason for putting your life on the line is that you despise your foe to the point of destruction.

And that left X. Only X. But after Zero died, something changed in him…

_Like a tiger unleashed from its cage, he seemed to become invincible, and everything he laid eyes on was destroyed._

I grew frightened then a little bit…

Because when Sigma and I looked into X's eyes from a security camera image…

I saw Zero in him.

"The both of us will have to do our very best. Otherwise, we'll be dead." Sigma muttered to me.

Yes, Sigma…You're right…

_But death is far from the worst thing in the world._

* * *

We waited there in the final room, the highest tower atop all of the Fortress. The room's lights were darkened, aside from a few hanging ones that lit only a narrow swath of the floor.

"This is it, boy." Sigma breathed. "There's no turning back now. Either he dies…or we die." I nodded, keeping my binary responses to myself for a change.

_I've been waiting for more than 30 years for this moment, Sigma…you have no idea the kind of torment that's been…_

And then our mutual foe appeared…Climbing up out of the entry shaft and barely clearing it before the gate shut underneath him. A purple colored energy shield of some sort flashed about him, but as he stood tall, it shut itself off.

It was then we finally let him know that we were there…jumping down from above.

I jumped forward towards X, ready to strike him down then and there…

"Yield, Velguarder!!" Sigma barked at me. So I stopped, sulkily trotting over to his side.

_Fine, I can wait another minute for this…_

"Sigma." X muttered.

"X." Sigma replied easily. X raised a hand up and pointed at the towering giant.

"You killed them all, Sigma. Jim Dacker, Cancer, all those Hunters and innocent people-And Zero as well. You killed them." Sigma's return was just as sadistic.

"And you in turn have become what you hated most. A bloodthirsty, reploid killing 'savior of humanity.' Heh! X, the pure definition of a hippocrate is you. My actions will bring freedom and salvation to a superior race, the meshing of humanity and machinery in the greatest blend ever. All you have done is killed your friends who strived for that goal."

"Sigma, NO DREAM is worth the price that has been paid. You've corrupted yourself and corrupted the very objective you try to attain. Because of the bloodshed, humanity will always see us as tools of war and destruction. Light built me-BUILT REPLOIDS-because he dreamed of a world in which we could live in peace." X shook his head. "Now the ultimate price must be paid." Sigma nodded as well.

"Then it seems we are at last agreed upon one detail. One of us will not live from this encounter. And for all your enhancements my dear friend, you are still weak. I am the most advanced reploid there is, and you: you, X are not even a true reploid."

And then he finally turned down and glanced at me. Could he sense the rage bubbling within me…Know how much anger I had stored up for this last creation of Light?

"I'm surprised you made it this far, X. Zero certainly knew what he was doing. I would gladly kill you here and now-but I would not deprive my pet of that pleasure. If you survive this fight, then we will meet. Until then, X." Sigma's eyes connected with mine…And he seemed to say, "I leave his fate in your hands."

_But he surely couldn't know. I never told him who I truly was. What X meant to me, by our histories. And I don't want Sigma to know. Nothing good can come from him…from ANYONE in this age knowing my origins. Too many questions, too many problems would arise._

_But then, it's too late for that now, isn't it…_

It's too late for anything except for my final act of vengeance.

I leap across the room over X's head, rebounding off the wall. I see him draw his hands together, squint his eyes as if hoping to hit me by luck…

And then as he brings his hands forward with a cry of "Hadouken!!" everything turns white. X shouts Hadouken. But my inner shout means so much more…

_**FOR MY MASTER!!**_

* * *

Time. Time is something that humans are very divided about. Years will cause their frail organic bodies to grow old, to die. And then they are gone.

Most humans try to balance this inevitable death of theirs with promises…promises that seek to make them feel at ease, to assuage their fears that there is nothing but void after the moment their heart stops beating. Religion…the concept of life after death.

But what of robots, then?? What of a poor, downtrodden creature like me, thrown about from point to point in life?? For me, time marched on inevitably. I should have died in 2085. And yet I was forced to keep existing until 2118. Is that fair?? Is that just??

Do reploids…do robots have souls?? Humanity says that a soul is the essence of a person, their personality, their demeanor, the thing that cannot be seen by a mere physical examination. But reploids have personalities…and over my wanderings, I developed one of my own. So did I have a soul?? Did I have something that would live on?

_Questions…nothing but unanswered questions. But we know who to blame. Humanity. _

Humanity cursed us. Humanity gave robots and reploids life, mortal existence. Did they give hope? The promise of something more, something beyond the observable??

No. Is it any wonder that the reploids would rebel? I'm nothing but a robot, and I still can see it.

Some humans also believe in the concept of Hell, or Purgatory. The two are somewhat different. They are supposed to be places without hope. Places that souls cannot endure long.

I lived in a state of purgatory since August 8th, 2085. I lost my life on that day. So was I a creature without a soul…was it torn from me, ripped away and forever denied?

Everyone was dead. Everyone I cared for. Everyone from that time that I hated. Everyone but X and Zero. And then even Zero was beyond me.

I lost whatever spark of 'humanity' I might have possessed long ago. In those final days, all I had left was my rage. My anguish. My tortured existence.

And you call me the villain. Deny yourself a true life. Lose everything that keeps you sane. Then, if you are none changed and mutated, then you may call me a monster.

But it's over now. I lost…X won. I'm no more…I've lost even that final scrap that kept me to the ground.

_Who…am I…_

Velguarder…no, not anymore. Velguarder was the twisted remnant of a lost age too stubborn or cursed to die off. Velguarder was the warrior dog of Sigma. And Velguarder was blown apart by Mega Man X in a single blow.

Am I Treble?? Even that can be doubted now. Treble knew of his life's problems…but he was himself, he had his master, he had a home. When all those were destroyed, Treble could no longer exist.

_I'm not Velguarder…and I long ago ceased to be anything close to Treble._

I simply sit in the void, pondering, thinking, wanting it all to just end.

_NO MORE!! NO MORE!! No more voices, no more inner conflict. Just let me sleep…please, if you have any sense of decency…just let the darkness take me. Let me sleep._

But then…

Something comes as I whimper…

_Figures…People…_

They laugh, all of them…radiant light striking out from around them as they come closer. _They come for me…_

One is whistling…The others laugh…

But I turn to the hazy goldenrod figure with black trim about him…

_No…it can't be…_

**Come on, Treble!!**

Master…

_My Master came back…_

MASTER!! I run to him, I run to them all…

The one in blue, the one with the rotund stomach and Santa Claus beard, the yellow haired beauty, the whistler…and my Master…

**It's gonna be all right, Treble…It's gonna be all right.**

I realize something then as he grows more blurry…I'm crying…

_But robots can't cry…_

This is something more. This…after all I've gone through, all I've suffered, everything seems to lift all at once.

I'm home…

_With my Master…_

And as they all watch…I rear back and howl. At long last in a cry of joy.

The suffering is over.

I can finally sleep…

_Mega Man X…the rest is up to you now…_

_We've done all we can. It's up to you._

But X can do it. We all know this.

Howl For The Ages??

Maybe later.


	8. Let The Wind Tell Him

_**MEGA MAN X: WHISPERS IN TIME**_

By Erico

CHAPTER SIX: LET THE WIND TELL HIM

I wasn't the first. I wasn't even the second. No, I had the good fortune to be the third child of silicon built by Thomas Xavier Light. You would know the other two, obviously. My brothers. The ones who fight, because that Doctor Wily doesn't know when to quit.

I'm expecting there's a lot of intelligence to the person who's listening. But to just be sure we're clear on who's speaking, my official designation is DL#02. I have blond hair, and I usually wear red. And my name is Roll.

See, this is what I find humorous, even though Mega Man and Protoman, or Blues, as I usually call him, have a higher chance of understanding humor. My own AI was a little more limited than Mega's or Blues' was when we were all first activated. And no, Blues was born years before me and Mega. My birthday is June 6th, 2070. So is Mega's. But that doesn't matter much in the long run. We're robots. The years go by slower for us than humans.

But anyhow, the joke. When Mega was born, our dad named him Rock. I was, and still am, called Roll. Rock and Roll. Get it? To add more groan power to the pun, I refer you to my oldest brother, Protoman. He was called Blues. And what's the name of the little bird built by Cossack for Mega Man? BEAT.

I'd say I've lived a full life. For more than ten years, I've had to help keep things around the house sane when my brother went off to counterattack the Robot Rebellions. And despite his level of intelligence for a human, Doctor Light's mind hasn't improved all that much. He's always losing everything, his car keys, the TV remote…

You might think that's boring, that I was denied some great privilege that was rightfully mine since birth. I'd disagree. Rock wasn't built to fight. Neither was Blues. And my official job when I was created was housekeeping robot.

We've all become more than what Light envisioned when he made us. We've become family. The only family Light had.

The Wars of 2040 affected every person on the planet. Countless millions died. Billions, even…But the Wars affected our father more personally, in two ways. First, he became a member of the Second Rainbow, humanity's attempt to undo the damage of their violent, destructive impulses upon the planet. And secondly, it killed someone very dear to him.

Her name was Vanessa…Light doesn't like to talk about that period of his life all that much. But I've done research. Vanessa Tercel was a high spirited young woman intrigued in the field of electronics technology, with platinum blond hair and jade green eyes. She and our father grew close…Close enough that I believe they were planning to be married.

But like I said…the Wars. The Wars resulted in Vanessa's death. Thomas Light never did get the chance to marry her. After she died, he never tried to love again. Too painful, too much of a chance. The world had gone mad and denied him something that most humans consider to be essential to life. And some time ago…it must have been 2076…I asked him about that.

* * *

Light's vast piles of notes and schematics lay untouched and tidy, Roll noticed. This was unlike him, for the doctor always kept himself busy with some project. The window remained open, and a gentle pacifying breeze came in from the outside.

"Doctor Light?" Roll called out, mystified by this abrupt environmental change. No response. She called out again and finished her search. No, he wasn't anywhere inside the massive robotics laboratory Light kept attached to the house.

But in the house itself, she found him. Sitting in the upholstered reclining chair with a faded photo held loosely in his left hand, a sad stare on his face. Mega Man was nowhere in sight, and Rush had gone off with him most likely.

"Dad?" Roll asked quietly. Finally, the world's most widely recognized robotics genius looked up. His pale blue eyes sparkled sadly. "What's wrong?"

"Just old memories." The doctor sighed, brushing a hand through his snowy white beard and putting the picture down.

Roll's psychological development had gone fast. Being exposed to the outside world, like she often chose to be, she had seen many female humans, and emulated them to a great extent.

Knowing that there was more to it than a three word answer, Roll pressed the issue, sitting across from him and pushing a few wild strands of hair back behind her head.

"Want to talk about it?" The old man Roll called father shut his eyes and took in a deep breath.

"At some point, I knew I'd have to. I knew you would grow curious about my own past." Light set the picture face down on the coffee table between them and pushed it to her. She picked it up and looked at it.

It was a color photo…Who knew how old it was, but the distinctive part of the picture was that there was two people in it. A young man with ruffled brown hair and sparkling blue eyes, dressed in a light blue T-Shirt and tan khakis. Sitting down in front of him was a dazzling young woman with golden tresses that tumbled to her shoulders and seemed to highlight her bright green eyes and satisfied smile. The man's arms were held about her waist from underneath her arms, holding her protectively, and her hands were placed on his.

Roll blinked at the photo a few times, letting the image be absorbed into her mind. She frowned and cross-referenced with what little else she knew about his past.

"Is this gentleman you?" Light nodded his head slowly to emphasize the point.

"When I was far, far younger…" He said quietly, seeming to grow even older as he said it.

"And this girl…" Roll blinked another time as she thought about it, then turned to look at him. "Is this the woman you were in love with?"

"Vanessa. Vanessa Tercel." Light affirmed quietly.

"I read through some old newspaper records once…you two were engaged, right?"

"And then Vanessa died before…we could even walk down the aisle." Light finished wearily. His dim blue eyes filled with tears as he looked at her. "Now you know…why I hate war so much. Because it took her from me." Roll nodded, taking it in. For a brief moment, she wished she could feel more emotion. If only to help comfort him.

Something else clicked in the back of her mind not much later, and she examined the picture carefully.

Her eyes flew wide as she realized what had caught her attention again.

"Vanessa…looks…like me!" She turned to Dr. Light, her surprise still awash over her face. Light nodded sadly.

"I said just now at some point you'd have to know…" Light bowed his head and reached for a kleenex, wiping at his eyes. "After the Second Rainbow reconstructed the Earth, I lost the diversion. I lost that crucial barrier that forced me to ignore my past, to push it aside and move on. I never could, Roll…I never could get over that loss."

He put his hands on his knees. "No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't outrun it…my grief, my sorrow, they were stronger. They came back, they never let me forget that I lost the only woman I ever loved to an explosion from one of the War's accursed bombs!" His voice grew more and more unsettled as he continued, the path he trod a painful one he felt necessary to walk.

"But why do I look like her, then?" Roll asked quietly, her voice concerned. "I mean, I can notice distinct facial differences, but…the resemblance is uncanny. As if…" Roll froze, her tongue poised but unable to continue. And there Light picked up for her, looking up at last with clear vision.

"As if you were her daughter." That statement made Roll collapse into her seat…but she regained her senses soon enough.

"Then Blues and Mega…"

"To be precise, if you saw them out of their uniforms and Blues wasn't wearing his sunglasses…they'd look the same. Like me…yet still changed. The biggest difference between me and them at the age I built them is they have black hair, and I had brown." Light finished. "You three are my children…and in some way, you are her children as well. She died, and never had the chance to see you. But if she's up there watching, Roll, I think she's smiling. Because she'd be as proud of you all as I am."

"I'm sorry…" Roll whispered, bowing her head. "I'm sorry you never had the chance to…"

"You don't need to apologize, Roll." Light corrected, standing up and sitting beside her, pulling her into a hug. "Vanessa died a long time ago. There's nothing anyone can do to change that. Besides, you're my family now. You, and Rock, and Blues…you're all I have. All I ever need."

"I never knew…" Roll said quietly, leaning against him. "Dad, why didn't you tell us sooner?"

"You weren't ready then." Light soothed, gently brushing her hair back. "And now, you are."

Father and daughter were content to remain like that for several more minutes…Connected by the memory of a long lost lover, and the mother that never was.

* * *

And that's how it was.

_We were family. Light's only family. That was all he needed, was us._

I never did tell Mega Man about that aspect of our creation. How we were supposed to be the human children Light never had. I didn't know how he'd take it, how Blues would take it. Blues felt replaced anyhow, because of Mega Man. How would my oldest brother feel if he realized he was created in the image of someone else who never was?? The two of them had more experimental brain pathways than me. More advanced, supposedly.

I could handle it. That was because sitting there with Light, I had enough time to let it soak in. To realize that I was myself, I was an individual. And already considering myself his daughter…It didn't matter that I looked like her. I couldn't hold that against him.

So time moved on. 2076 gave way to 2080…and then 2081 and the Seventh Robot Rebellion. And then, after everything else that happened, the Eighth Robot Rebellion, the King Encounter…Came 2085.

August…2085…

* * *

It was odd. Odd that we'd all be there at Doctor Light's house. Even Duo had come back to pay us a visit, believe it or not! We thought we'd be able to just sit back and relax…But it wasn't the case. No, that was shot out of the window the moment that Bass and Treble warped in front of our porch.

I remember the mistrust that Mega Man and the others looked at him with, how they tensed up for a moment as they thought that he had come to wreak havoc.

But not this time, I realized as I knelt down beside my brother's rival and examined his wounds. No, Bass had already had his fight, that much was evident.

_A crazy red superadvanced robot gone berserk…had destroyed every Robot Master in Wily's last Fortress and then done in the crazed scientist himself._

It was like Bass had to face a battle inside of his mind, one that had he not won, he might have died in. But then when he found the strength to talk again…It shook every last one of us.

Wily's final creation was based off of schematics taken from Light's lab back in 2081 during the Seventh Robot Rebellion. Schematics that highlighted the existence…of a Mega Man X. Light seemed to grow older then as we discovered that.

We soon discovered why.

Mega Man X…was the final evolution in artificial intelligence. He would be as inorganic as me or Mega or Blues…but his mind, his MIND would have all the capabilities of a human's. Strength, speed, everything soared off the charts and beyond what we knew as our limits. And Wily's Demon, as Bass called him bitterly…was only worse…

Bass tried to get up, but collapsed from his injuries once again. The poor fool…We had to repair him, yet at every turn he screamed that he needed to get back there, to stop this thing. Because it was coming, it was going to come for X to destroy him.

And X was as real as any one of us…

* * *

"May heaven forgive me for all that comes to pass." Light whispered. His children and allies stood behind him, patiently waiting for the venerable Doctor to show them the great secret of Mega Man X.

Light gently pushed aside a bookshelf, which slid along easily on a lubricated rail system. This in turn revealed a doorway with glimmering lights and a passcode entry system. Already in the heart of the attached lab, every last robot blinked in surprise. Here lay an entryway they never suspected before.

Light's trembling hand reached up and punched in a numerical sequence into the keypad, hiding his work so that the robots accompanying him could not see the code sequence.

The door chirped in agreement and slid open. Behind it was a spiraling stairway that seemed to go down and down beneath the earth forever.

"He's down this way…in my laboratory's hidden chamber. Not even Wily ever knew about this." Light said wearily.

"That would mean this hidden room is older than me." Mega Man noted. Light turned about, a frail smile adorned on his face.

"It's almost older than Blues." The gray and red armored robot merely set his jaw, his eyes hidden behind the barrier of his dark sunglass visor. "Just be careful going down. Bass…are you sure you can make it? It's a fifteen foot walk."

"Save your sympathy for someone who needs it." The ebony colored robot snapped. Light noticed that for all his brave words, he still leaned against Roll for support.

They all slowly made their way down the steps--even Duo, who despite his large size managed to make it down the passageway without problems.

And then they were in Light's hidden room…a filtered blue light came down from the ceiling, and the room smelled of a sterile hospital bed. Gads of machinery, including a supercomputer from LightTech, lay in various corners of the room, placed by necessity and not for aesthetics.

But all eyes turned to the center of the room…where lying upon a slightly upraised hydraulic platform was a capsule all in blue, save the top which glowed a deep red.

"Eight feet by fourteen feet?" Mega Man uttered, doing some automatic measurements. "Seems kinda big."

"Not for what's inside." Duo mumbled quietly, lifting his enormous left hand and pointing. "Take a look inside."

All of them did just that, except for Light who went over to a chair and sat down, tucking his head into his hands.

Most of the capsule's interior was fogged by condensation, but they saw what lay inside.

It was indeed another robot created by Light. His raven black hair held a stunning resemblance to Mega's own, but he seemed to be taller than his predecessor. He slept onwards, blissfully unaware of the maelstrom of events that churned about his world--because of him.

"He's…" Roll hesitated, silently looking over her thoughts and searching for the right words. "He's unbelievable."

"He's asleep. To be more precise, he's in full stasis." Light finally spoke up. He got to his feet and walked over, still looking far older than he had just three hours ago. "I've never activated Mega Man X. He's only been in this stage of his development for the last week…"

"How different is he?" Blues mumbled.

"Have you ever heard the sociological concept, Tabula Rasa?" Light asked quietly. "It means blank slate. That's effectively what X is right now. When a human is born, its mind is nothing but trillions of unconnected neurons. Being exposed to the world, experiencing stimuli…this is what gives a human being its knowledge, its motor skills, its capabilities of communication and their very demeanor and personality. Effectively, a human's brain wires itself from birth through what they experience…it is this that makes us all individuals. X's mind works on EXACTLY the same principle. He knows little…Aside from basic motor functions, automatic repair and stasis programs, and a limited communications package, he is without a personality."

"So. This is the thing that will replace us." Mega Man finally spoke up. Light blinked, his face hurt by the comment.

"Mega Man, nothing can replace you. You're my son!" Mega Man looked up, pain evident on his own face as well.

"Yes, but I'm not the perfect son. He is." Mega Man shook his head and looked down again. "Wily is dead…killed by his own creation."

"And he's coming here." Bass reminded them sadly. "The Demon's primary reason for being was to destroy Mega Man X…as well as the original."

"So this is why we fight." Blues said. "To stop the Demon, Bass's goal. And to protect Mega Man X." He flipped a glance at Light. "Your objective."

"I can tell you more about when the Demon is coming. But I want to get back upstairs." Bass mumbled. Unknowingly, he shivered as he stared at X again. "Being around another advanced robot gives me the creeps." Duo merely stared at X, his eyes somewhere beyond the present…

And then they all left, their glimpse of the future seen and put back into the ground, into the shadows.

Roll passed off Bass to Blues, then waited behind while the others went back up. Something made her turn back around and walk over to the capsule, made her stare into the sleeping face of Light's Final Creation.

"Mega Man X…" She whispered, putting her hand on the plastishield covering of the capsule. Her blue eyes sparkled brightly as she looked down at him.

"It's Roll. Your big sister." Still X said nothing, as gone to the world as Light had told them he was. "You're it, X. You're the last step in the process. The final evolution…But don't ever become too proud, too defiant. Wily created a monster like you." She shook her head. "Whatever happens X…"

"Just please promise me this…"

_"Don't forget the sacrifices we'll make…and don't become the nightmare."_

* * *

I stayed behind longer than the others for a reason. I needed to say that.

_I knew very well that whatever copy of X Wily made, it was different than X. But just that possibility…Of seeing this sleeping angel wake up and then begin to crush the world under his feet…_

Trust me. Robots can have nightmares. Every line, every curve of X's face became embedded into my mind. He looked so much like Mega Man…yet somehow older, more mature…Light later told me he did this for a reason. X was to resemble a young adult, older than Mega Man if the two were human.

Everyone else busied themselves with their plans, their strategies. Light had to rebuild the Super Adapter for Mega and Rush…

All I could do was wait. Wait, and for the first time ever, help to repair my brother's self-proclaimed rival.

* * *

"Blast it, I'll be fine!!" Bass snapped tersely, pulling his arm back away me.

_Oh, Bass was all bark and no bite. Always was, probably still will be._

"You're not fine." I said back, glaring like a mirror to him. "Your leg's been crushed into almost complete uselessness, and your arm isn't faring much better." To emphasize the point into that thick skull of his, I moved my hand up and squeezed his damaged arm. He hissed, despite whatever amount of self-control and machismo he thought he had. "See what I mean?"

Bass lowered his head down and muttered something…that sounded remarkably like a malediction.

"Pardon?" I queried, reaching for the nearby medical scanner. Bass finally lifted his head up and spoke clearly, his purple hair waving behind him.

_Yes, purple hair…I don't know why he always keeps it covered up with that stupid helmet of his. Hair that beautiful should be left for the wind to play with._

"I said, why the Hell are you helping me??" He spoke. No doubt about it, he was hurt. I could see the pain in his eyes, dulling their sharpness…

"Because Doctor Light told me to, and because Blues seems to trust you a bit more than I'd expect." I answered simply.

"Why would anyone trust me?" Bass murmured. "I'm one of Wily's forsaken children, fer Chrissakes." _Bass…there was a time I didn't understand either. But these aren't those times. And I'm wiser than you give me credit for._

"I asked Blues the same thing once." I countered, staring into his eyes as I lowered the scanner and pulled up a cylindrical regenerating wand, running it up and down his arm over and over again. As energy was fed to the auto repair systems, and enhanced by minute particles of high tensile metals needed for internal repairs, I continued. "And you know what he told me?"

Bass played the silent act, but I knew he'd heard me. So I continued, my eyes focused on my work.

"He told me that you were different from the others. You didn't hate blindly. You weren't Wily's perfect son. You didn't go out every day and terrorize the populace for the joy of it. He saw promise in you, a glimmering ray of hope I couldn't see." My work was finished quickly, so I took the time to grin at him. "The arm feeling any better?" Bass flexed it a bit to check it, then nodded his head.

"Seems to be working fine." To further test it, he morphed his hand into his Buster, and then back again in a blink. "Yup, you fixed it." He begrudgingly admitted.

And then he did something so incredibly stupid, I had to grin. He hopped down off the table, despite his still badly wounded leg. It hadn't gotten any better, and I wasn't surprised when he gasped out in pain and began to collapse.

He didn't have that far to fall. I caught him before he'd cleared even two feet. He just sort of hung in my arms awkwardly, and I felt a blush of color rise to my cheeks. A perfect punchline came to mind…

"Well now…never thought I'd see the day a robot would fall for me." If Bass was stunned by the comment, he recovered quickly.

"Don't flatter yourself too much." He grumbled sarcastically. "Blondes annoy me. Scream too much." My smile faded into a bit of shock before Bass stuck his hands up. "Just kidding…but don't get any ideas in that pretty little head of yours." He thought the discussion was done with, so he pushed himself back up onto the table and sat again.

_It was a joke, just a stupid, meaningless joke…yet at the same time, why was I so flustered when he was that close? It couldn't be love. Not love like humans think of it. Robots can't fall in love. But it was something else…_

_Then and there I knew what it was. I'd finally accepted Bass. Still, nobody comes off making jokes about blondes around me. Not even him._

As a sign of my displeasure, I leaned down and pushed hard against his injured leg. I could almost feel his eyes roll back up into their sockets.

"What was that for?!" He wheezed.

"The dumb blonde comment." I muttered, standing back up. "Now if we're done exchanging insults, I have to fix your leg up. Sheesh, how did you manage to get banged up as much as you did? I swear…"

"You try fighting a robot that's as comfortable killing with his bare hands as he is with weapons and laughs while he's causing insane carnage." Bass sighed. "No, more than that…The Demon is more than a robot…"

"More than you?" I asked.

"More than Mega Man. Right on par with what X probably has." Bass answered glumly. "I can't sugarcoat it, Roll. The Demon's already killed every Robot Master that stood in his way with ease, and killed Wily. He's insane, he's powerful, and he's more dangerous than anything ever made before by human hands. I don't even know if we'll be able to stop him."

"Then why are you doing this??" I pressed. Bass clenched his fist up, then looked over to Treble, whose metallic bristles were as purple as Bass's hair.

"Because I have to." He lowered his fist down and pressed it against his leg. "Mega Man may have made my life miserable. That's why I always wanted to defeat him…to get my old life back." I took a few steps back, wary of him as he continued.

"But The Demon's worse, Roll…He didn't make my life miserable. He destroyed it. He killed my creator, he killed all the robots I called allies…And I know that before, and even after he takes out Mega Man X, he'll do the same to everyone in the world who gets within eyesight. He has no heart, he has no soul. He's just a coldblooded killing machine with more smarts, more power, more speed than I could ever dream of having. As far as I'm concerned, I'm dead already…" Bass was quieter then.

"Borrowed time, Roll, that's all I'm living on. He's taken everything away that held meaning to me, aside from Treble. I have nothing to go back to, nothing to keep existing for. The only thing I have now is the bottled screams and anguish of my years of suffering. It was focused on Mega Man once. Now it's the Demon."

It only clicked further then…my feelings about Bass. Feelings that spawned from something Blues had told me once…

_Bass isn't the monster you think he is. He's just had a rough life. Am I any different??_

"You have to have something to live for." I said quietly, walking over to stand beside him.

"I do." Bass replied. I shook my head.

"No. Not rage. Not your pain. Something more than that."

"I have nothing else." Bass croaked. I still shook my head, then gently reached over and clasped my hands around his clenched fist.

"I can't undo everything that's gone wrong in your life." I said as a surprised Bass lifted his gaze up to look at me. I looked into his face, my eyes clear. "But what I do know is that things are different now. You're more than what Wily made you. You're not his servant, you're not his abandoned son. You're one of us."

"Who is us?" Bass asked painfully.

"The ones who are going to put a stop to all of Wily's mad dreams once and for all. We may have different reasons, but we have the same goal. And for once, you're fighting for a decent reason." I smiled at him. "Maybe Blues was right. You are capable of change."

Bass lowered his gaze back down, and shook his head back and forth.

"I don't know anymore." His body betrayed him again then, shuddering in mild convulsions "I'm still the same person. I still have the same emotions, the same outlook and demeanor. So how am I changed?"

I looked at him for a long moment…Because I noticed something about him that I'd felt myself.

"You want to cry, don't you?" Bass couldn't say no. His mild convulsions were evidence enough. "It's tearing you from the inside out. This dull ache you can't attribute to a physical wound. It doesn't seem real, yet it is all the same."

"How do you know what I'm feeling??"

"It's the same thing we all felt eventually, Bass." Roll said quietly. "We may be just robots, but we have feelings. We can be happy, and we can be sad. And we can feel grief. That's what you're feeling now."

"Grief." Bass said, irritation beginning to show through. "That's what it is. Grief." He seemed to laugh at that.

I merely stepped back and stared at him.

"Yes."

"Oh, well THANK YOU ROLL!!" Bass cackled insanely, tilting his head back and exhorting his chuffed chuckles. "The resident robot psychologist has just nailed my problems. I'm suffering through GRIEF!!"

"YES!" I shouted, more irritated at him now. "Because you're the only robot of Wily's regime left. Because you FAILED to stop the Demon from killing your creator. Because your world's been SHATTERED." Bass's laughing grew quieter, and by the same token, my own voice grew sadder as I continued.

"Because for the first time, you're experiencing a state of emotion that's more overpowering and draining than anything you've ever experienced. It makes you want to cry, to just get rid of it all. But you can't cry. Because you're a robot, and you lack the ability to make tears."

Bass slumped over, his head bowed again like a beaten dog's. Treble chuffed and went back to relaxing himself.

"So what can I do?" Bass asked mutedly.

"The only thing we can do." I said plaintively. "Move on. Let the experience strengthen you, give you purpose. And move on with your life." She folded her arms. "All this time, you've been fighting…and somehow, Mega Man always had the impression you never knew what for."

"For vengeance." Bass whispered.

"Against who??" I whispered back, shaking my head. "In any case, this next set of repairs is going to be more grueling. Your leg got bashed up the worst."

"You need me to power down?" Bass asked, prompting me to nod. "Just promise me…I'll wake up." Bass said, his eyes focused. "I still have things left to accomplish before my time in the spotlight fades away."

I offered him a weak smile. "I'll be waiting for you when you wake up."

"Good." Bass sighed, lying back against the cot. I began to hum to myself as Bass's various systems began to shut down.

"And Roll??"

"Hmm?" I mumbled, looking down into his face.

Bass offered a wry grin. "Don't go kissing the sleeping beauty."

"What, afraid you'll turn back into a frog?" I chortled. We grinned at one another for a few more seconds, and then Bass's eyes went dull and shut, his head drooping lazily to one side.

Treble chose that moment to get up, yawn, stretch, and walk over to the table, standing up on his haunches and hanging his front feet up onto Bass's good leg. He looked up at me and chuffed.

"Quiet, pooch." I mumbled, reaching for the nearby wire resplicer. "I'm not gonna go getting a crush over your master."

Treble chuffed again, seemingly content at that new parallel. Despite my best attempts at control, I giggled and smiled at the dog's reply.

"Still…do you think I should color his hair pink and see what he says??"

Finally, Treble growled at me for the first time since he'd entered the house.

"Well, never mind then." And the night went on…

* * *

Yes, Bass got to sleep. But I couldn't. I spent half the night working on Bass's leg, with a bleary Treble watching me from the corner of the room. I wondered if he'd fallen asleep…but unlike Rush, Treble was more enigmatic and unpredictable. Still, I couldn't deny him his loyalty.

_Those two would stand next to each other until Hell itself claimed them, given half the chance…_

And then my work was done…but like everyone else in the house that wasn't unconscious, the trials of tomorrow weighed heavily.

_Do you know what it's like to be one of us? One of the robots? It doesn't matter which one…Mega, Blues, me, Bass…Any one of us feels the same._

My mind couldn't help but summarize the day…Just another relaxing period of sunlight to catch up with friends and family, and then Bass showed up…

The Demon, as he called it, had been in the making for four years. And now we knew that we were no longer special, we were no longer Light's only children.

There were others now. The Demon and Mega Man X. They were better than us. Stronger than us, faster than us, smarter than us…

_More human than us._ My own humanity…

That's what made life livable for me. If I had been brought into the world as a mindless drone, just another high-tech gadget for all the world to use and abuse…

I couldn't take that. But I was Roll. To be precise, Roll Light. I may have been made of silicon and metal, but my spirit was human.

Seeing Mega Man X…

_Stole that from me…Now HE was the ultimate representation of humanity in machinery. And what did that make me…_

What did that make any of us??

I couldn't stand being in that room with Bass any longer. I had to get out, get some fresh air. The rooftop terrace would serve well, I thought.

It was only when I reached it I noticed I wasn't the only one who had that idea.

Duo opened his eyes and looked over to the terrace doorway from where he hovered, his massive beady optics blinking a few times before he identified the figure.

"Good evening, Roll."

"Hi, Duo." Roll replied mutedly, walking out and sitting on a foldout lawn chair. She focused her blue eyes on him and lifted an eyebrow. "Why're you hovering like that?"

Duo took a moment to peer behind him and the blue jets of repulsorthrust coming from his tiny, angular wings.

"I'm too large to sit down." He offered simply. "Your chairs can't accommodate my larger sized body."

"Hmm." Roll replied quietly. She shut her eyes for a moment, and then looked up to the twinkling stars above. "Duo…just where do you come from?"

Duo thought about it for a long moment, then pointed to the sky.

"Somewhere in that sea of stars." Came his answer. Roll frowned.

"What kind of answer is that?"

"An honest one." The alien robot admitted. "I don't remember anything about who created me, or where I came from. All I knew from the moment of my activation was that I was adrift in the void of space…and my sole mission in life was to seek out the destructive energy…"

"The kind that fell to Earth during the 8th Robot Rebellion, right?" Roll asked. Duo nodded.

"That would be correct, madam." Duo extended his massive left arm out and peered into his palm. "Perhaps that is why I postpone my mission…because never having known what a home is…I come to you and Mega Man and the rest of you for an example."

"Just another wandering spirit…" Roll mused sadly. "Mega Man X…What do you think of him?"

Duo's massive eyes opened and shut a few times before he spoke.

"He is Doctor Light's newest creation. In him I see a gentle peace…one that was never given to you."

"That's because he's more human." Roll spat out. "Now he's the only thing Light's concerned about…"

"How can you say that in good conscience??" Duo muttered, narrowing his eyes and staring into Roll's face. Roll fell silent as she locked gazes with him. "After all he told you, after all he explained about why he made you the way you are, and why you are his only daughter…"

"You're reading my mind." Roll said shakily. Duo nodded.

"It's not a talent I've learned to actively control, but it makes its presence known at times. Limited precognition…and mind reading." He sighed and turned about in the air. "Roll, a lot of things are being thrown into question tonight. I can feel the imbalance in the air, seeping into every pore of this house…But the one thing you cannot doubt, you must not doubt is your father's love for you and your older brothers. He could never replace you. X could never replace you. X may well be the future…but this is the present, Roll. And that remains solid."

"I see." Roll acquiesced quietly. "It's amazing, this talent you have…it's like you always know what to say, when to say it…"

"It's just something I live with." Duo shrugged again. "I do not know the full extent of my own intelligence, I must admit…I might be more advanced than even Mega Man X will be…then again, I might be less advanced than you."

"Kind of makes my own problems seem less important." The female robot said with a small smile. She stood up and moved over beside the hovering Duo, who finally descended onto the deck and shut his thrusters off.

"Duo, you can see things we can't."

"That is correct, essentially." He offered with a shrug. Roll looked up at him.

"What's going to happen? Tomorrow, when Wily's Demon comes for X…comes for us…What will happen?"

Duo shut his eyes then, as if engrossed in deep thought. He finally opened them and spoke.

"There will be a battle." Roll was looking tensed now.

"Is that all you can see?"

"That is all I wish to see." The alien robot said sadly. He shook his head and looked out to the stars. "Roll, there is something I want you to realize from our talk."

"What's that?" The alien robot shrugged his shoulders, gaze still locked onto the sky.

"All my life…I have done nothing but fight. For a righteous cause, yes, but…Until I met you and your family, I did not know that life could offer more. I had to come to grips with myself then, the same as what you must do now. I lived cycle to cycle, never knowing when I would die. The next battle could be in a mere blink of an eye, or megacycles away…I just never knew, Roll. Orphaned, with only my mission as a guide, I could have easily gone awry. But I found out something then. Do you know what that was?"

Light's daughter was silent, indicating she didn't. Duo continued.

"Life becomes precious to you then. When you don't know how long you'll be able to live it, every breath of air is a joy to be treasured. For all my precognition, my psychic abilities, my talents to peer into the future, the greatest lesson I learned was that the only time you ever needed to focus on was the present. To enjoy it, to live it…to be able to look back and say "I lived"…And so what if death comes? If you have lived your life, done all you can, you have nothing to worry about, no loose ends."

Duo tapped his right, more normally proportioned arm against his side.

"Now do you see why I choose not to bother myself with what will come tomorrow?"

"Yes." Roll replied mutedly. "But I don't think I could handle…losing my family." Roll looked up at him. "I'm not the warrior that my brothers are. I'm not as strong as them."

"They would fare no better if it was you who fell at the Demon's hands." Duo said. Roll nodded, then looked out to the stars, following Duo's own gaze.

"You don't bother yourself with our future. But what of X? What of X's future? He hasn't even lived…"

"X's future…" Duo mumbled, his eyes growing darker. "It's a haze…a dream I can't recall to active memory. Yes, I worry about his future."

"What do you know about it?" Roll asked. Duo turned his face down and smiled at her.

"Tonight…nothing. But tomorrow…" He shrugged, as if to say 'maybe'. "Right now, you should head back down to the lab. You left a promise with Bass you would be there when he woke up." Roll chuckled a bit.

"I guess I did…" She waved a final goodbye, then walked back down into the house.

Duo once more lifted himself up into the air, then folded his arms as best he could. Once again, his eyes grew dark as his vision went out of focus…

"For once, I can't see…" He whispered to the wind. "X, I don't know what the future will bring. There is a cloud, a barrier that blocks my sight…"

_A barrier that we will pass by tomorrow._

* * *

I was there when Bass woke up, sitting in a corner of the room and watching him. But he never saw me as he brought himself out of stasis, stood up, and walked out for the front entrance, taking his dog with him.

_The night had been hard on me. Hard on all of us._

We all had unanswered questions, nagging doubts…in a sense, we were overwhelmed, and didn't have the time to deal with it. We could only let time stroll on.

Bass never said thank you for the repairs I gave him. Not verbally…

But later as I stepped out on the porch, looking on at Blues and Mega and Bass massed together as one, and whispered almost too quietly for them to hear, to come back alive…

He said he would.

_Come back alive…_

_**I will.**_

Mega looked at him oddly for a while after that, contemplating, thinking, his brain chewing away on that simple two syllable sentence. But I got all the answer I needed.

In that moment before they took off to face the Demon in the first wave…

Bass had finally accepted his place as one of us.

One of the children.

But I never got to say more to him.

_Because when that first battle was done with…_

_Only two came home._

Two out of five.

* * *

I wanted to scream at the sky then, curse it for being so clear…

_So clear when everything else was so cloudy, so unpredictable and so full of grief._

"Mega Man?" Duo asked in a concerned voice, his face showing concern. "What happened?" My brother could only look at us with an unspeaking, unblinking stare, then tear his helmet off and let it roll to the ground beside him. Only Auto had the sense of mind to speak then.

"Oh no…" Then Treble appeared behind Mega Man, wobbling unsteadily on his feet. Mega Man looked relatively intact…but Treble had not made it from the fight without his wounds.

"They're dead." Mega Man said hollowly. As if the statement was a heavy iron club, his knees gave out and he collapsed into a kneeling position. "They told me to leave…Said they were already dead…"

_No…not them, please don't tell me that they're dead…not Blues, not Bass!!_

Then Light appeared at the door behind us all, his face more tired than ever.

"I saw." He whispered. "I saw it all, Mega Man. One of my old aero-drone cameras…" He blinked his eyes a few times, then brushed away the tears and sniffled back in his cries. "Protoman, Rush…blown into atoms. And Bass took his own life with a suicide blast."

"Why…" I whispered. I looked to Light, feeling my insides burn, ache…

_Is this pain…the pain of loss and grief…_

I'm a robot…yet all the same I still feel this agony, feel how it churns my insides against me…

"WHY?!" Father reaches over with his broad arms and draws me close, holding me tightly as my body convulses.

_It's beyond my control…I cannot cry tears, but yet my body reacts as if I was…_

Treble is the only one of us to speak then. In his own, misshapen way…He rears back on his haunches and howls, howls long and hard up at the sky, screaming in pain the only way he knows how.

And then he is gone, too full of his grief to deal with the rest of us, to remain in this place, now so full of tortured memories and anguished wails.

"Poor creature…" Light sniffled, watching Treble soar off into oblivion.

"He's still following his master's orders."

* * *

_And then there was just us. Duo, Auto, my father, me, Eddie, and Beat…_

The others were dead, killed by the Demon just as Wily…just as every Robot Master in his last Fortress was.

_Built to destroy Mega Man X…to destroy Mega Man…to eliminate all traces of Wily's scorned enemy._

Now I truly do wish Wily burns in Hell…because he has unleashed a blight upon the world like no other. Beyond control, beyond logic, beyond rationality. A blight whose only purpose, like a swarm of locusts, is to sweep across the land and leave only death and destruction behind him.

And yet he's still coming…Light's aero-drone cameras still register the moving presence of the Demon. Wounded from the initial onslaught, but still coming…

_He isn't invincible, he has been harmed. If I were stronger, maybe I could move on past the deaths of my oldest brother…and my newest friend…_

But I'm not strong. I can't say that they died for a reason.

_They died because of him._

* * *

Light turned to Duo, his face still crestfallen.

"He'll be here in thirty minutes, Duo. We'll have to make our last stand here. We have to stop him." Duo nodded grimly.

"Your son and Bass will not have died in vain." He turned to Mega Man. "Are our forces massed?" The Blue Bomber's eyes were like ice now, hard and ready to burn through steel. He took one look behind him to Eddie, once more equipped with hoverthrusters and a bomb launcher…to Auto, with his Bolt Bazooka…And finally to the towering alien robot.

"We're ready."

Roll finally picked herself up from the porch stoop and moved over to the small force.

"We might never be ready." Her dark turquoise eyes flitted to Light. "Give me a Buster."

Light was taken aback by her sudden statement.

"Roll, have you gone defective on me? You can't…"

"DAMNIT, JUST GIVE ME A BUSTER!!" She snapped. Now everyone jumped at Roll's sudden outburst.

"Roll, why?" Mega Man asked, his once angry eyes now worried. Roll looked at him, matching blue to blue.

"This thing would destroy us all if we let him, Rock. We can't let him take any more lives!" Roll pointed to Mega Man, her face snarling now in her pain. "You were there…you were there with Blues and Bass, and yet you did nothing to save them!"

The Blue Bomber was deeply hurt by the comment, his eyes said as much. But yet Roll continued, her anger not yet boiled into oblivion.

"Why is it that you lived when they didn't?!"

"Blues would have died eventually anyway!" Mega Man snapped back. "Don't you remember?! That energy glitch in his systems was slowly killing him off, and he wasn't taking steps to let us help him stop it!"

"Then what about Bass, huh?! Did you hate him that much, Rock?! Was he that much of an enemy to you that you would let him die at the hands of that monster without so much as a shot to help save him?!" Now the two siblings were face to face, venting their rage the only way they knew how.

"I never WANTED Bass to be my enemy!" Mega Man protested fiercely. "If I could have, I would have dragged him back here as well! But do you know what, Roll? He was the one who screamed at me to leave them there, to leave them alone with that Demon! He chose his own fate, Roll! I couldn't change that, no matter how hard I would have fought!!"

Nobody spoke for a while then. Only the gentle breeze of the wind spoke, softly moaning as it rustled the leaves up in the nearby Treeborg. Roll fell down onto her knees, shaking her head as she looked at the ground.

"Bass…He was one of us, Rock. And he'd changed."

"I know." Mega Man replied quietly. "I know he changed."

"What happens will happen." Duo said. He walked over to them and looked down at Roll. "I know how tough it is to deal with the pain of losing someone dear to you. But are you sure that you want to take up arms against the Demon?"

Roll looked at him, her eyes clear.

"If I don't help fight…then there will be nothing left to fight for. Blues and Bass are gone, Duo. The Demon took them from me. I can't let it happen again. I have to stop him."

"The world is going to pieces." Light spoke sadly. "My daughter wants to fight alongside her brother, and the world is going to pieces."

"No, Doctor Light." Duo said with sudden precision. He looked around at the massed warriors and shook his head. "The world isn't going to pieces."

"It's merely changing."

I know, I know…it's irrational. It's illogical. I heard the arguments with my own ears, and I heard a part of me scream that as well.

_Why would I choose to fight now…_

My answer to them was that if I didn't, there would be nothing left to fight for. That's the ideological reason, the one that people emphasize in the history books. Why did so many Native Americans fight the sweeping hordes of U.S. Cavalry during the 1800's?? To preserve their way of life, to protect their vested interests. Why did so many teenaged boys of the United States forge records so they could join the army during World War II? To defend the world from a threat that would inevitably sweep the globe.

_But that isn't why, is it…_

No, that isn't why. On the outside, they boast of the grand ulterior motive for their actions. But now I have become one of them.

_And that isn't why I fight…_

I've never taken up a weapon before in my life. Because never before have I been pushed to. Never before has my life, my family been stripped from me. Never before have I felt so helpless, so weak and outdated…

_So enraged and infuriated beyond reason, beyond SANITY…_

That's why!! I fight because I'm angry. I'm angry at the Demon. I would do anything to make him suffer, make him pay for this…

_And that's when you know you've crossed the threshold. When you don't care anymore. When you don't care if your actions will eventually lead to the end of your life. Now I know how Bass must have felt, facing that Demon as Protoman went up in a blaze of atoms…He was beyond hope then. Nothing was left to him. Nothing but the void, and the monster that would send him to it. That is why he did what he did. Because he still defied the inevitable. Because he still fought._

And I know Mega Man has felt like this. About Wily…about the Demon…about the enemies that threatened all he held dear.

I can't describe it more than that. I'm not X. X could provide a flourishing description of this…this rage…

There are the ideals you fight for. And then, there are the emotions that force you to fight, ideals or no.

* * *

They saw the Demon some ways off as he came in. Light had long since placed a call with the Tokyo police, and had managed to get this part of the city evacuated without divulging the true reason…The only thing he mentioned was that another Wily robot was on the way, and the threat was best left to those who lived in his house.

Nobody was there to record the fight of the century. No camera crews, no eyewitness reporters, no side spectators. The outskirts of Tokyo were dead, the interior shied away and blocked by the police who thought it best to not tell anyone the true cause of the alarm…Thirty, forty years from now, nobody would know what caused the interruption of their normal activities on August 8th, 2085. Only the records at the Tokyo Police HQ would have any note of the reason, and that would remain buried deep in the archives, not to be released for public viewing until fifty years from now. None could have known it then, but like the rest of Old Tokyo, the Police HQ and their archives would be buried and burned underneath the eruptions of Fuji only two years later.

The Demon walked with a slower tempo now. His objective was not far now, yet he still walked. Considering the damage his body had taken from the battle with the red and gray robot and the gold and black one he had fought the day before as well as today, speed was not something he concerned himself with. Most of his higher brain functions remained in slumber, suppressed by the blaring drone in his head he had been born with. It was a drone that was melded with him, bonded with him. Like a skintight suit and the body it contained, matched perfectly.

_**Destroy. Infect. Survive.**_

Silently, his somewhat sluggish mind worked away, churning over the three directives time and time again. **Survive.** He walked slowly, allowing his internal systems time to quietly churn away, doing their best to repair the damage. However, nothing could be done about his charred and mangled chest armor. His most recent battle had been the hardest. He had underestimated them, perhaps…Still, in the end he had destroyed the red and gray one, and the red short canine-like robot…and the black and gold robot had destroyed himself in a fireball that did significant damage to his systems.

It was a relatively simple series of computations. The directives' presence was very imposing, denying him more than that.

But then…the blue one, and that purple canine-like robot had escaped. The purple thing was of little consequence, but the blue one…

**Destroy. **The first directive droned clearer now as he brought a still image of the blue one to the corner of his eye. The wild haired one…the one who broke easily and screamed as he did…He had issued a command to destroy 'Him'…What little rationality he had indicated that the blue one was most likely his primary target…

Yet, something else nagged at him. A one-time file that had played in his mind forty minutes after his activation, after his initial fight.

_**Mega Man and Mega Man X are the main targets. Eliminate them at all costs.**_

It was fuzzy now, like everything else in his muddled, hazy mind…Remembering anything came with great difficulty, surrendering to the directives' drone was so much easier--as well as pleasurable.

_**Destroy. Infect. Survive.**_

The directives droned on. The Demon acknowledged this and continued his pace.

And then he saw the place that was his final target.

Beyond the control of the directives, the Demon let a snarling smile cling to his face and clenched up a fist.

He could already smell the blood.

* * *

The Demon came, his pace a slow, methodical walk that infuriated the final defenders of Mega Man X.

Beat and Eddie hovered close to Roll, who stood on one knee beside a vigilant Mega Man out yards beyond the porch. Auto stood up at the roof of Light's house, his Bolt Bazooka clamped firmly in his hands, his usually inscrutable optics now narrowed as he drew a bead on the Demon's approach. Methodical and wary, the mechanics robot waited like the sniper he usually was.

Light himself was hidden in the basement of his house, in the room that contained Mega Man X, leaning weakly against his youngest son's capsule as he clenched a low powered magpistol in his hand. His eyes remained glued to the TV monitor he'd rigged up in the basement, continually reading a feed from another aero-drone camera outside.

Duo hovered silently at the entrance to the house, his massive left arm glimmering with the pale blue light that was his power source and weapons energy. Like all who waited outside as the sun continued to rise up into the sky, his face looked out as far as it could, to the approaching menace four years in the making.

The Demon's approach came with a sight that chilled them all, made them tense up for a brief moment as they realized just how inhuman Wily's last creation truly was…

His chest armor, once majestic and proud was now melted and charred, and a gaping hole clear through the protective barrier stood out for all to see. Yet through all the damage that Bass and Protoman had managed to inflict upon him before being claimed by the void, the Demon still walked on. And he was still grinning with that sick smile, like a cat in the jungle that stalks his prey.

"He truly is a Demon…" Duo muttered in shock. He looked up to the clear sky above, dotted with only the barest hint of clouds and shuddered before looking back to the approaching threat. "Bass's description was accurate indeed…"

"He's like a juggernaut." Mega Man growled, pulling up his Mega Buster and charging it to his maximum strength shot. "You can't hurt him with the small stuff…you just can't…"

"Roger that!" Auto called out, pulling back on the trigger of his high impact weapon and blasting off a missile that flew on, the recoil jarring the heavyset robot despite his steady footing. Mega Man turned about in surprise to watch the missile streak by and hurl itself towards the Demon.

"No, Auto!! We have to fight him TOGETHER!" Mega Man screamed in frustration. By then it was too late…

The shot had been dead on, and the Demon knew it. He halted dead in his tracks and lifted his arms up from their easy swinging gait…

Then the shot impacted and exploded, engulfing Wily's final creation in a maddening bath of smoke and flames. All held their breath in wonder as the concussion's roar swept over them and the smoke continued to rise into the sky.

All their hopes were dashed as the Demon stood in the thinning maelstrom, laughing insanely, his hands held protectively in front of the only chink in his armor.

"Oh, that's BOLTSHIFT!!" Auto muttered angrily, a modified malediction he used sparingly. "What kind of monster IS this thing?! That was high grade explosive!"

The Demon kept walking with his slow and easy gait, but now he stopped laughing as his eyes settled on Mega Man. The Blue Bomber knew all too well Wily's final creation was staring directly at him, and he began to walk forward, his left arm and charged Buster dangling at his side.

"Yes, we've met before…" Mega Man growled at the Demon, not caring if the madman could understand him or not. "BUT YOU WON'T GET PAST ME!!"

The Demon's smile faded as the two of them drew nearer, each moving with a slow and deliberate gait. Now only the insane gleam in his eyes hinted at his real motive…

Mega Man lifted his Buster up and fired. At the same time, Auto released another round from his Bolt Bazooka, and Duo hurled a beam of his blue light towards the fiend with a powerful scream.

Yet they all came at different speeds, from different positions. The Demon stared at each one for a long moment…then finally acted, with cool, collected precision that betrayed the more rational mind within.

Mega's Buster blast was dealt with by merely swinging his right forearm about and cleaving through it. As if his very armor was built to withstand the power of Mega Man's plasma weaponry, the Demon dissolved and disarmed the shot with a single flick of his wrist…

Next came Duo's shot, a great beam of energy that the Demon stared at with narrowed eyes for only a fraction of a second before taking action. In a burst of flames, his boots ignited with the fires of Hell and flung him free of the blistering shot. But still blurring about in his insane speed, the Demon appeared in front of Mega Man, his malevolent smile once more returned.

A stunned Mega Man could only scream in surprise as the Demon hoisted him up by an arm and threw him like a helpless rag doll towards the final attack…Auto's concussion missile.

The explosion was just as loud and ominous as it had been before…but with a far weaker target on the receiving end, a target unable to defend himself in time, the attack did far more damage. Mega Man collapsed onto the road at the Demon's feet, flat on his back with his mouth silently screaming in horrendous pain. Every other inch of his trademark blue armor and suit was gashed, torn, and bleeding. Bleeding with the only liquid that was inside of Mega Man, thin streams of green hydraulic fluid.

"NO!!" Roll screamed. Instinctively, she ran towards the menace, and Beat and Eddie followed. The two assistant robots were faster and managed to reach the Demon before the only daughter of Light could. The Demon looked up from the badly damaged, but now groaning Mega Man towards the new threat. He blinked only once before lifting his right arm up and morphing it into a Buster, disintegrating each of the would-be saviors with a pair of ovoid plasma bursts.

Duo and Auto were too far away to be of any use…neither one could react now, and even if they did, their attacks might harm the injured Mega Man and the charging Roll.

Roll took note of Beat and Eddie's passing with further rage and frustration. More victims at the hands of this monster…

"WHY DON'T YOU JUST DIE?!" She screamed. Her arm came up, with the temporary Buster Light had given her. She fired blast after blast, and at her close, and only narrowing range, the already distracted Demon was unable to defend in time.

Two plasma blasts sunk into the damaged region of his chest armor, one deep enough he stumbled backwards from the blow and clutched protectively at the wound.

And yet Roll kept firing, kept running…

Recovered from his wound, the Demon's narrowed, burning eyes centered on the impudent female warrior with the blazing flaxen hair.

With nary a second thought, the Demon roared in anger, kicking Mega Man back towards the house with as much force as he could. Roll could hear the unmistakable gasp of pain as Mega Man was flung like a soccer ball into a ragged heap beside Duo, who rushed over to help.

And then the Demon's eyes flitted to Roll, with their maddening glint and cold precision. In a single blink of time, he appeared in front of her, looming over her like a towering giant of death.

She gasped for a moment as she felt a sudden, knee crippling pain shudder through her, radiating out from her stomach. In fact, as she looked down, she noticed that her knees had in fact collapsed…yet she remained at the same height.

Her suddenly glazed blue eyes realized why soon enough…the Demon had jammed his entire fist through her abdomen, and had pierced from one side of her body clear through the other, keeping her suspended in midair by his sheer sick joy and will.

"NOOOOOOOO!!" Came a scream from far off…Every part of Roll's sensory systems was growing more sluggish, downpowering as all of her did to avoid a massive overload of her power generator, the fusion tank only inches above where the Demon's fist was plunged through. Still, she recognized the voice…Mega Man…

The world grew grayer then as the breeze about them picked up, gently waving her tossed blond hair and green hair ribbons about as if she was on a picnic, and not in the final moments of her existence. Slowly, her face craned up, a dull look of shock still unchanged upon it. She locked gazes with the Demon.

He too had a long mane of golden wheat behind him…but Roll also noticed his helmet…He was the Demon, and his helmet had horns. Roll's mouth contracted one final time as she stared down into the deep pool of madness behind his gaze…and she only had time to say one syllable:

"X…"

The Demon snarled at her, perhaps understanding what she said, perhaps not…But it didn't matter. Not to Roll.

With a single sweep of his arm, the Demon hurled Roll up into the air and lifted his other arm high, charging up his Buster for the final kill shot. Like Protoman before, Roll would vanish from existence in a bath of fire spawned from the Demon's rage.

And yet that was beyond her…

As she toppled through the air, her blue eyes locked onto the clear sky above, cloudless, pure, perfect…And for one final moment, her eyes cleared, and saw something beautiful right before she died.

And the wind waved through the trees, gently playing with the golden tresses of the gentle sister of X.

* * *

Humans say…that you see your life flash before your eyes right before you die.

_That never is true…_

I saw only what I wanted to see in those final moments, what I wanted to carry with me. The faces of those who had died, and those who lived on after me…

The wind…It's a strange phenomenon I never was able to explain, yet in every memory I hold dear, I find that the wind had a part in it…

_I fought to stop him. And I failed._

I couldn't stop him. Protoman and Bass couldn't stop him. Eddie and Beat and Rush were all destroyed in a single blast of fire…

_My rage is gone…I could never forgive the Demon for what he has done…what he will do…but my rage is gone._

I'm dying…I know it. And I doubt it will be a slow death, it will come quickly, like the hurricane gale that follows the Demon. A chill wind has arisen, and the world is changing…

_Changing into what??_

Protoman…You always felt secluded from us. You always went out alone. But we loved you. You were my oldest brother, and you saved Mega Man time and time again…

Mega Man…I know that you've felt the inklings of that maddening rage that captured me to fight. You never could forgive Wily, could you…None of us could. But he was doomed to his fate. Killed by his own creation. Just promise me…for my sake, please try to live. If all of us die, then…

_Bass…_

For the longest time, you were an enemy. But you never needed to be one…You were one of us, and in the end, you accepted that, and we accepted you. I don't know where I'm going after this...Some humans say they go to Heaven...but of us robots..._Bass, I'll find you…I don't want to lose you ever again._

But what of the one I'll never get the chance to know, be able to meet?

_Mega Man X…_

We've sacrificed our lives for you, to protect you, to protect the world from the final threat. We all die here today…so that you may live, so that there may be a future, a peaceful one, one where the Demon will not bring harm and grief.

_Duo said the world is changing…But did he know how?? X…Will the world change with you, or because of you?_

You must live, X. I hope that Mega Man and father will live beyond this threat…Someone must show you how to live…

I can't. I wish I could, I wish I could destroy the Demon with a wave of my hand, allow you to live on, and allow us to do the same. I would have loved to have a younger brother…

_But is that right…_

Perhaps, X…Perhaps you're beyond any of us. Beyond what we could ever hope to reach. Perhaps we'd only be a burden. Maybe that's how the world is changing…

_Our age is ending…and yours is yet to come…_

Only the wind will live into the future…And someone must tell X of what has been done here today, of all the sacrifices made so that he might endure…

And yet I still feel the breeze, feel the comforting lull of its gentle caress…

_X, some day you too will feel this wind…_

The wind will live…

So let the wind tell him.


	9. For The Future

_**MEGA MAN X: WHISPERS IN TIME**_

By Erico

CHAPTER SEVEN: FOR THE FUTURE

I was born in the still air of the vacuum of space, and my baby blanket was the sea of stars all around me. It sounds poetic, I know. Then again, seeing as it is the memory I have of my activation, I do look upon it more fondly than others. I had no parents, I had no place to call home. I just had a mission.

Translated into a term that you would be capable of understanding, my name is Duo.

I can't place exactly how old I am…However, with what rough estimates I have been able to make, I was brought into existence around the same time as Earth entered the Atomic Age…the late 1940's to early 1950's. That's the best I can do.

I did not know where I came from. I did not know who created me. I was just there. I was just Duo. And I had a mission.

My objective was to search the Galaxy for a particular energy source…one that resonated at an opposing frequency to my own power. My strength glowed bright blue. That of my enemies glowed purple. Once I had found such a purple source of energy, it was my purpose…my reason for existence…to then destroy it.

Eventually, I began to refer to this opposing force as "Evil Energy." Boredom, perhaps…But my directives were strong about the matter. No matter what I called it, it had to be destroyed. Occasionally, I was given a potent reminder why.

The Evil Energy had a destructive nature. Sentient, peaceful beings could not cope with it, yet those with dark intentions and evil wills seemed to make it thrive even more. Thus, you could say that those with good spirits could be harmed by its effects, and evil spirits only made it grow.

I had no idea in those early Decacycles that there might be others like me out there. Warriors that lived in the vacuum and breathed stardust. And then…suddenly, I did.

* * *

Duo was not one to be easily surprised by most events. Having existed in a frame of reality where stars exploded into dust, planets shifted and collapsed, and pulsars sent out wave after wave of radio energy, the unknown was simply a statement used to describe what he had not seen yet--not what he would never see.

But just like that, as he floated with his mind silently ticking in the beginnings of his rest cycle, an unfamiliar energy signature graced by his sensors.

His eyes went wide as he brought himself to full operational status, following the source…

It appeared in front of him, not exposed, hidden within the carrier.

The two looked at each other long and hard. Both large, both built to fight…both with one super-enlarged arm. The new one calmly lifted a hand and pointed at Duo, warbling over a short, line of sight transmission.

"Yobik Kurrzil??" _**Who are you?**_ Duo blinked a few times…he could understand the stranger. More importantly, as they stood there and let their energies come to bear, they realized that they were similar.

Because both now glowed blue.

_"I am Duo."_ The massive robot replied back, stunned by the newcomer. _"But…How are you like me?"_

_**"There are many like us." **_The newcomer replied. _**"I, for instance, am Nazyr."**_

_"I thought I was alone."_

_**"We all did. Until we met. Duo, I am happy to meet you…brother."**_ Nazyr's voice gave off an inflection of joy, of sheer exuberant giddiness.

Likewise, Duo found that he felt a similar happiness seep through him. Because before, he had been alone. And now, he had found someone else like him.

_"How many like us have you met?" _He asked, extending his hand out and clasping it on Nazyr's larger arm. Unlike Duo, Nazyr's oversized arm was his right. Duo's was on the left.

_**"I have met six others…who traveled in a group. But they have met others…who have met others…as if we were scattered across the cosmos, we now find ourselves coming back together, drawn as the family that we are."**_ Nazyr examined Duo for a long moment, then frowned. _**"You are relatively new, though…"**_

_"New?" _

_**"Inexperienced, fresh…untrained. You have yet to tap into the full power of your abilities!"**_

_"And you would teach me how to grow better at this?" _Nazyr nodded.

_**"Duo, forgive me for asking you this. It is a question I ask every new brother that I meet…do you know anything of the makers?"**_ Duo thought long and hard about it, then shrugged.

_"If you mean…the ones who made me…then no. I awoke in the middle of nowhere, with only my mission."_

_**"Yes…the mission." **_Nazyr mumbled. He looked about them for a moment, then over to a nearby star, brighter than the rest. _**"Come, Duo. Let's move to that star over there and see if we can't find a planet. I would like my feet to be on solid ground before we say anything further."**_

Duo nodded, eager to please his new friend. They took off.

Not long after, they reached it…only to find it had one planet, a barren, rocky ball of a wasteland.

_**"This will do." **_Nazyr said calmly.

_"There is so much I want to know…"_

Nazyr assured Duo that whatever he could answer, he would.

* * *

"How long have you been active?" Nazyr asked, leaning back against a large rock to support himself. Duo remained standing, quietly thinking over the question before he reached an answer.

"About two Decacycles, I suppose. Probably more than that, but…"

"I know, it's hard to pin down an exact date." Nazyr finished reluctantly. "There are those of us that are more than thirty Decacycles old."

"Incredible!" Duo stammered. "And yet, our entire kind remains stymied about our origins?"

"Sadly so." Nazyr admitted, pulling up his enlarged right arm and laying it across his lap. "This is why we always ask newcomers. In the hopes that some day, we will come to understand why we have been left here with only our mission to guide us."

"And who are we? What do we call ourselves?" Duo questioned, finally sitting down cross legged on the barren red soil. Nazyr shrugged, a small sad smile on his face.

"This much I know. The name we chose for ourselves was suggested by our oldest warrior…A fifty Decacycle old female known as Marla."

"So who are we?" Duo pushed again. Nazyr's eyes seemed to grow dimmer as he spoke.

"We are…The Watchers." The elderly Nazyr stood up and looked at Duo. "For as long as we have lived, we have wandered. Silently watching the galaxy--and striking out whenever we find our enemy."

"The Evil Energy." Duo whispered, his eyes growing wide in spite of his newfound courage. Nazyr narrowed his own optics.

"So that's what you call it, eh? I suppose by now you've had your fair share of run-ins with it."

"I know the harm it can do." Duo said calmly.

"Indeed." Replied Nazyr. "So I can assume that you are familiar with the dispersal technique." Duo nodded. "I thought as much. But how do you fare with the more advanced tactics? Show me what you can do."

Duo thought over Nazyr's words for a long moment, then hovered up into the air, his narrow wings burning off green fire. With a powerful yell, he charged at a nearby boulder and slammed his large fist through it, crumbling it apart.

Nazyr, of course, wasn't impressed. He narrowed his eyes and folded his arms. "Is that the best you can do?" Duo blinked.

"I can do more?"

"Worlds more, brother. And I shall teach you. Because just like there are the Watchers, there are warriors who walk with the dark energies to feed them." Nazyr stood up and walked over to Duo, staring into his eyes. "The Carriers. And when you face them…and you will, Duo…you must be prepared. To win…or die." Duo nodded for a long moment, then stuck out his right hand.

Nazyr clasped it firmly with his own more massive right paw, then harrumphed.

"Most basic to your continued evolution is a firm understanding of your power source."

And that was how Duo met his mentor.

* * *

That was a stunning revelation for me. That there were others like me…

_I wasn't alone…_

My mission was to seek out the Evil Energy. Now I had been told that it was carried en masse by warriors known as The Carriers. My enemies. Nazyr was right, of course…his own abilities and knowledge far surpassed mine. And he was only a mediocre warrior of The Watchers. I had to improve. If there was any hope of me making an actual difference, I had to reach levels of skill and understanding far beyond where I stood then.

My strength came from the blue energy source within me. Embedded deep within my chest, it pulsed. Contained, self-sufficient…and yet I had not yet tapped into its full potential.

The two biggest hurdles for any Watcher to jump, Nazyr told me very early on, was learning how to align the body…and align the mind. Alignment of the body allowed a Watcher to harness the energy that gave them life as a destructive weapon. The energy source that powered me was the most powerful tool against the Evil Energy, as well as The Carriers. This was how I used the dispersal technique…merely calling forth enough of my own strength to counteract the negative energy, and forcing the two to react so that both flashed out of existence. My own strength would replenish, given enough time. Thus, I could never 'run empty', as one might say. I could only run dangerously low.

And for another Decacycle, that was exactly what Nazyr worked to prevent…through vigorous training to force my power to grow.

* * *

"Come on!" Nazyr grunted, hurling off a bolt of crackling power towards Duo. The larger blue and red armored figure narrowed his eyes at the shot, then boosted himself out of the way with his wing thrusters. Nazyr roared, hurling off a widespread barrage of shots aimed across the skies where Duo now flew.

"Oh, no you don't…" Duo growled, pulling his left hand to bear and clenching it into a tight fist. Blue light leapt into existence around his entire body, protecting him from the hail of Nazyr's power.

Unscathed, Duo emerged from the onslaught with a wide grin on his face. Nazyr narrowed his eyes.

"Good, you have defense down. But do you have the SPEED to take me?!" Nazyr's own wings expanded outwards from his thinner, yet taller frame, blasting him up into the sky to face Duo.

Both roared in fury as Nazyr approached. Duo caught him off guard with a perimeter ring of energy that exploded into a brilliant flash, forcing the elder Watcher to spin up and away from Duo.

Instinctively, Duo raised his massive left hand up and focused energy around his fingertips. Despite himself, Nazyr was forced to dodge, roll and spin through the air, all the while keeping his shield up at maximum strength.

"Oh, you get so predictable sometimes…" Duo chuckled, drawing his left arm back and clenching his hand into a fist. His eyes watched Nazyr spin away from the barrage, hovering right in the spot Duo had guessed he would.

Thus, a surprised Nazyr was unable to dodge away from Duo's blistering super-beam, fired as Duo launched his arm forth like a ramrod and punctuated the attack's release with a scream.

Nazyr's own energy shield crackled against the furious attack, then finally fell with a whine. The rest of the wave sent him sprawling to the ground, coughing on the dust kicked up by his collapse.

"Yield." Nazyr finished weakly, lifting his smaller left hand up into the air. Duo merely smiled and let his blue energy seep back into storage for regeneration, then walked over and helped his teacher to his feet.

"You're getting stronger, Duo." Nazyr said, taking in a deep breath. "And a lot more skilled in combat. I'm confident enough in your skills I'd put you up against a Carrier right now!"

"I can't help but think that you're holding the second part of that statement back." Duo said with a small smile, folding his arms as best as he could. Nazyr chuckled and waved a finger.

"I can't slip anything by you, can I? Yes, Duo. There is one concern I have." Nazyr sat down on the barren ground and sighed. "While you have trained your body to the utmost, what we have been unable to do for you is train your mind."

"In other words, my mentalic talents aren't as high as you'd like." Duo added quietly. Nazyr shrugged.

"That necessarily isn't a bad thing, Duo. Some Watchers are destined to be better fighters than seers, it's just how it is. Myself, for instance…I'm nowhere near as talented a warrior as you, but my mentalic abilities rank quite high."

"And mentalic abilities are important to us." Duo said. "With the skills of a warrior, you can face the menace of Evil Energy and the Carriers. But the talents of a seer is what allows Watchers to hunt the enemy down in the first place."

"Among other things." Nazyr sighed. He stared his large blank eyes at Duo and nodded. "So I shall still go with you, Duo. Some day, you will be able to face the void alone, take down hordes of Carriers, and walk with purpose, determination, and confidence. But until we can improve your mentalics…and we will…You still need me."

"I understand, Nazyr." Duo replied with a smile. "I don't exactly feel ready to go it alone anyhow." Nazyr harrumphed with an even bigger smile.

"Well, that statement's a breath of fresh air…at least your head won't get too big." Nazyr paused and re-examined his words, then shrugged sheepishly at Duo. "In the emotional sense, not the size of your crani…Aah, forget it."

* * *

It only took a Decacycle of full training with Nazyr for me to reach my level of skill. I could remember the extent of my abilities before I met Nazyr, and I shuddered every time I did. I was so inexperienced, so raw. If I had met even the weakest of Carriers, Nazyr affirmed, I would have been space dust.

Still, he was right. My mentalic talents weren't nearly as powerful as they should have been. Compared to his, even compared to others.

Aside from Nazyr, I'd never seen other Watchers. But change was coming. A very big one.

* * *

Duo snapped wide awake, his eyes blinking furiously as he sorted through the vision he'd had. Or at least…he thought it might be a vision.

"Nazyr." Duo called out, picking himself up to his feet and looking over twenty steps distant. Nazyr too was slowly pulling himself awake, his own eyes already narrowed and focused. "Nazyr, I…"

"Did you see something?" Nazyr asked. Duo nodded. So Nazyr was reading him…Still, the elderly Watcher had the good graces to stop there. Duo could tell when his mind was being looked at, and that icy hand pulled back quickly. "So what was it?"

"A giant orange sphere in the sea of stars…but located far beyond the core, in the very outskirts of the swirl." Nazyr nodded, folding his arms.

"So it's finally happened then…you've had a precognitive vision."

"A what?"

"An image of things that may come…yet may not. The future, Duo, is a hazy mist one cannot pierce clearly. Even the brightest of mentalic Watchers are hampered by that."

"So what good does it do me?" Duo asked, his voice growing angry. Nazyr grinned.

"That is where experience and practice shall aid you, Duo. Over time, you will learn to stare through that veil…not as clear as the horizon in the world before you, but well enough that the images there are more than mere ghosts. Enough so that you learn to separate the tiny specks of reality from the fog that clouds it…Enough so that you can surmise its meaning, and act on it."

"But what if I am wrong? What if the choice I make is a wrong one?" Duo pushed, suddenly fearful of the process that had happened within his mind. Nazyr stretched his massive right hand out and placed it on Duo's shoulder.

"If you just let it happen, Duo…you will always be right." Nazyr pulled his hand back and harrumphed. "Obviously, it has happened now. But what did you see?"

"A battle…" Duo said quietly. "A battle between Watchers…and Carriers."

"More than one?!" Nazyr asked sharply. Duo shut his eyes and nodded.

"And it's going to happen soon…"

"You know where?"

"Yes, but I said it would happen soon. It would have already been mostly over with by the time we got there." Duo affirmed sadly. Nazyr shook his head.

"That's of no consequence. Battles have been won because of the tide turning in the last half." The elderly Watcher emphasized adamantly. "We must go, Duo. I trust in your vision, but you must show us where to go." Duo powered up his green tinted thrusters and floated up into the sky, and Nazyr followed.

"I shall take us." Duo said clearly. Nazyr offered a reassuring grin of determination, and the two shot off like rockets, clearing the thin atmosphere and hurtling into space with their hearts to guide them.

As their locuses of blue light grew stronger and they sped up to unbelievable speeds, victim to the natures of physics, Duo could hear a resounding thought ride through his brain before everything vanished into light…and beyond.

**I just hope we're not too late.**

* * *

Astronomers on Earth had found an intriguing sight to their wandering telescopes during the Autumn months of 2081. Their attention was focused not on a far away cluster of random stars, or a pulsar, or even a bright gaseous cloud.

It was turned on Jupiter. For more than a week now, they had been treated to a dazzling display of fireworks in the solar system's largest planet's orbit. Blue and purple lights seemed to clash, collide, and hurl themselves to destruction against one another. During the night, even amateur astronomers could focus their smaller Magellans onto the gas giant and see it, and during the day when sunlight blotted out the heavenly show, live feeds from the sixteen year old Hubble Mark 2 orbital telescope delivered live feeds 24 hours a day for one of the clearest pictures of the action.

And yet for all the eyes that turned and watched, nobody could identify just what was causing the phenomenon. It wasn't any sort of asteroids streaking down, crashing into the giant's atmosphere and blasting out matter. No, the blue and purple lights moved under their own accord…from point to point, blinking and shifting beyond the expected attitudes of any natural spaceborne projectile. It even defied humanity's greatest rocketry. Whatever was at work wasn't natural…

However, interest slowly died in it. Aside from the limited rebirth of 'alien invader' hysteria, which had quelled itself in four days because people just didn't give a damn about anything but their own lives, the event continued on. With eyes watching faithfully, yet more turning away to other matters night after night.

Yet there were those who kept vigil. And it was those who were able to say with full confidence that when it had begun, there were at least thirty-seven individual blue lights around Jupiter…and forty-six purple ones.

If anybody on Earth had had the ability to peer beyond the range of a telescope and into the mystical boundaries of the unknown…the truth behind what was causing the spectacular 'Mystery lights of Jupiter'…

They would have reached for another sweater. Because the truth would have made them shiver in terror at the apocalyptic struggle less than a light week away.

* * *

The battle between the Watchers and their dreaded foes, the Carriers, had given both sides massive casualties. To a race that had no way of knowing their true population, it was a heavy loss to take. Only the oldest, the strongest of all the Watchers remained, with two Carriers bearing down on it.

Marla wheezed from her wounds, her energy supply fast draining from the extensive use she was putting it to. Her smaller right arm clutched down at the sparking open wound in her side, caused by a fateful piercing blast of negative Carrier energy that might have taken her life, if she hadn't been able to dodge it in time. Still, she had been harmed, despite all her efforts. Her massive black irises stood out clear in the optics of white, tiny pinpricks that stared out at a foe beyond comprehension.

"Damn you monsters…" She mumbled weakly, pulling the remainder of her main battle energy forth to enhance her shield. The blue light flared only momentarily before resuming its normal glow. Marla's heart fell…it seemed that they'd gotten the better of them.

The Carriers had come out of nowhere, swooping down on her pack of Watchers like raving bandits. Caught unawares, they had slowly been whittled down, despite their skills. It hadn't helped matters that there had been forty-six of them, and only thirty seven Watchers on hand.

The remains of Carriers and Watchers lay scattered in vast swaths of dust and debris around the great red and orange planet's orbit. Amazing as it seemed, the debris field from their battle had created a second ring around the planet, brighter and more visible than the natural one. And now only Marla and the two Carrier bandits remained to duke it out.

The Carriers looked at each other for a long moment, then turned to Marla and shot their hands out straight. A pair of massive purple shockwaves hurled themselves across the void, blowing through bits of debris like wind through ash as they made their way to Marla.

The Watcher shut her eyes tightly, keeping her field sustained. But she knew that it was too late. Their blasts would eliminate the final scraps of her main power…which meant a slow death as her body, crying out for power, was denied the thing that kept her alive.

Just then, a blistering blue ball slammed by her and hit the Carrier's waves head on, dispersing them. When the blue light died down, a large and glaring Watcher stood in its place…

"Who…" Marla began, falling into stunned shock. The Watcher turned around and smiled, saluting from its squarish helmeted head.

"The name is Duo…We've come to help."

"We?" Marla asked, still fazed and weak. Another blaze of blue settled beside her, and cleared to reveal a familiar face. "Nazyr!!" The lankier male Watcher nodded grimly and motioned to Duo.

"Duo is my trainee…He had the vision that brought us here."

"It's too late…" Marla said, her enthusiasm failing. "Thirty-six Watchers have already fallen…"

"Thirty-six?!" Nazyr whispered in horror. "Gods, how many were there?!"

"Forty-six of them…caught us by surprise." Marla replied weakly.

Duo's eyes remained focused ahead on the two Carriers. They exchanged glances at each other for a moment, then realized they were facing stronger odds now.

"They're still alive." Duo said through gritted teeth. He clenched his massive left hand up into a fist and summoned forth a handful of his blue energy. "You're way too weak to do any more good. Leave this to me and Nazyr."

"Cocky, isn't he?" Marla mumbled with a small smile. Nazyr patted Marla on the shoulder consolingly and glared at Duo.

"Behave yourself, Duo. This is Marla, the oldest of all the Watchers!" Duo lifted his head a bit, but still kept his eyes focused on the two troublemakers ahead of him.

"I've got plenty of questions I think only you can answer, Marla, but right now there are other things to worry about."

"I will help." Marla said firmly, holding onto Nazyr. Duo's mentor channeled some of his own power to Marla, recharging her enough that she could fly over beside Duo with Nazyr and form a triad barrier. "They are fast, young Watcher. Don't underestimate them."

The two Carriers charged at the group, flying straight through them and dispersing them in all directions. Nazyr and Duo were chased by one, while Marla had her hands full running from the blazing shots from the others.

"Damn, they're fast!" Nazyr cursed angrily, wincing as his shield crackled from the impact of a purple concussion round. Duo looked behind him, narrowing his eyes and following the pattern of bobbing and weaving the Carrier performed to avoid their return fire.

"Fast, sure. But they're also predictable." Duo muttered. Nazyr looked over oddly.

"Huh?"

"When I say go, fly straight up and shoot down at him!" Duo commanded. Nazyr thought over it for a moment, then nodded. Duo seemed to have a grip on what to do.

With the opening shout, Duo went low and Nazyr went up, turning about and firing bolt after bolt of blue light down at his pursuer.

Just as before, the Carrier dodged and curled through the hail of blows, in the exact same pattern. And that was when a grinning Duo, looking up from below the pair, released his charged superbolt with a large grin. "Gotcha!!"

Duo's blast caught the Carrier completely by surprise, hitting him dead on and without a chance to defend. In fact, it so stunned the Carrier that Nazyr was able to finally strike the fiend with his own energy bolts. Trapped between the two blistering attacks, the Carrier soon succumbed, howling out a final shrill whine of rage before exploding into pieces. His purple negative energy source began wisping away as it combined with the blue of the Watcher's fury, exploding into a brilliant white light before disappearing forever.

Nazyr drew beside Duo, his breathing heavy. The younger Watcher propped his eyes up in concern.

"Are you all right?"

"I'm old, Duo…Haven't had to run like that for a very long time." Duo shook his head in disbelief.

"If you had that much trouble with him, then Marla…" Duo caught himself short. "Oh no."

The two swiveled their heads about, craning their wandering eyes to try and focus on the bright specks of illumination that were Marla, the oldest of the Watchers, and the final Carrier.

And there they were, three clicks away…

Marla grunted in frustration, spinning away from another blistering beam of radiant purple light.

"Damn you, STOP SHOOTING AND TAKE ME FACE TO FACE!!" Marla finally cried out for all to hear.

Surprisingly, that's just what the Carrier did. He lowered his arm down and stopped his beam attacks, then ignited another shape for his energy…an elongated blade of pure negative power.

Marla turned about, her wing thrusters retrofiring as she pulled herself to a halt. Her eyes narrowed as she stared across the battleground to her foe, then clenched her left hand down and made a similar blade from her blue light.

"About time…now we'll see if you have the makings of a warrior, instead of a coward!" The Carrier, his skin a dark purple black, merely narrowed his set yellow eyes and charged.

Duo and Nazyr hit their own wing thrusters to maximum power, making their way to the battlefield as quickly as non-blink mode would allow…And yet they both knew that it could be over by the time they reached Marla and the Carrier.

Carrier and Watcher dueled like art in perpetual motion…blue and purple energy blades swinging and singing in synch with one another. Every thrust prompted a parry, ever parry a broad swipe to clear the distance between the duelists. Marla's eyes narrowed to crescents, and the Carrier's narrowed to mere slits.

Blinding light exploded every time their weapons collided, the more powerful strokes threatening to blind them. Yet they held on tightly to their weapons, and held on tighter to their concentration. The smallest slip-up would be fatal, for both warriors knew after only a few moments of crossing swords that they were evenly matched…professionals both, with an eye for killing. They could have fought at long range, using their respective energy sources to rally blast after blast in a climactic fireworks display. That was how most of their fallen comrades had done it…

But the eldest Watcher and the last Carrier of the bandit pack had gone beyond that now. This was a battle beyond mere survival…it now hinged on insanity, on rage, on grief for all that had died before.

"Marla!" Duo called out, watching on in alarm as the duelists' swords continued to clash in blast after blast of raging force. Nazyr's right arm stretched out and blocked Duo from charging in. Confused, the young Watcher turned to Nazyr, only to see Nazyr keep his gaze locked onto the duel.

"No, Duo…This is Marla's battle. We have to trust her to come through…"

However, the surviving Carrier had something that Marla didn't…something that assured him victory, no matter how skilled Marla was with her energy sword. His energy source still had a quarter of its strength, while Marla was running on fumes and what little Nazyr had donated to her.

Both fighters now spun in the void like crazed tops, their blades mere extensions of their inertia and will…

And then the Carrier roared, as best he could over the radio frequency that both Watcher and Carrier used, and swung his blade down with every last erg of his physical strength.

Marla brought her own sword up to bear, blocking his shot…but he pushed with so much fury, so much power, that Marla's weapon crackled and sputtered…and then died as her own force was depleted just by the act of repelling his attack.

His sword carried through, swinging a deep gash across her chest before pulling back and stabbing deep into her abdomen…into the core that kept her blue powers intact and supplied.

And only then did Marla scream…Because the Carrier had struck her weakest point.

Laughing with all the darkness that both fed and came from his power source, the Carrier pulled his blade out of Marla's now motionless form and kicked her in the direction of Duo and Nazyr.

It was Duo who caught her in midflight, held her close as her glazed and tired eyes turned to Nazyr.

"Marla, no…" Nazyr whispered in horror, peering down into her face.

"I'm sorry, Nazyr…I was too weak to handle him…" She said with a sad, defeated smile.

"Hold on, I'll transfer some more energy to you…" Nazyr began.

"No." Marla cut him off quickly. Her right hand slowly dragged itself up and pointed to the deep stab wound in her stomach. "Wouldn't…do anything…he got my core." Nazyr's face fell into grief, and Marla shook her head. "No, don't cry for me…You always were a basket case, Nazyr…"

"You can't die…" Nazyr said tearfully.

"We all die eventually, Nazyr." She said back. "We just don't know when…"

She tilted her face up and looked into Duo's saddened eyes.

"Duo…I'm sorry I won't be able to answer your questions…"

"I don't think even you could have answered them." Duo offered. Marla's eyes brightened for a moment.

"What…were you going to ask…about our origins?" Duo's eyes went wide. Marla shook her head. "You can discover the truth…if you look long enough. But right now, your concern is…the Carrier."

Marla's eyes closed shut, her body relaxed more…and her voice dropped to a whisper.

"Duo, you must defeat him…For the future…"

And then she died. Duo turned and looked at Nazyr, whose face was full of pain and grief.

"Why couldn't we save her?" Nazyr's face was like a block of ice, growing hotter from the inside and threatening to crumble.

"That bastard Carrier…hit her core. The center of her body that stored the power source all Watchers share. As soon as he did that, he made that core barren…never again able to channel in the blue energy Watchers live by."

"No…" Duo said in horror. He looked down at her…her slightly wrinkled face seemingly so peaceful in those final moments before death.

She had fought…and she had died trying. And now it was his turn.

"Duo." Nazyr said through clenched teeth. The young Watcher looked to his mentor, startled by the sudden rage that blossomed from its contours. "It's up to us now…we have to kill the last Carrier."

* * *

The purple Carrier stared across the ether of space at the two final Watchers, his arms folded across his chest and his power blazing slowly about him, curling like wisps of smoke about a flame.

Duo looked at the Carrier with dread, with terror…for he'd just seen how very real the danger was, how this skilled Carrier could end their lives just as easily as he'd done to Marla.

"Duo!" Nazyr barked angrily. Duo's eyes snapped and blinked back awake.

"Huh?"

"Wake up, Duo! This is no time to go getting shell shocked on me!" Nazyr growled. "Marla's dead, all right? Nothing can help that. But unless you get moving out of that catatonic state, there's going to be a lot more dead when this thing makes a run for it! And that long list includes both you and me!"

There was no time to say anything further. The Carrier had finally grown tired of waiting…smelling the scent of blood in the air he charged towards them, a massive purple scythe stretched in front of him, threatening to cut the final two Watchers to pieces.

Like before, Duo and Nazyr scattered. Only this time, it was Duo that was being chased, and not his mentor.

The final Carrier moved with unbelievable blistering speed…only by shifting his mass into a spherical fireball and flaming ahead, an attack Duo called the Meteor Crash, was he able to stay ahead of that swinging blade. Even then, Duo was gritting his teeth. Meteor Crash wasn't something he could sustain for long periods of time, and the chase was slowly wearing down his control.

"Nazyr! He's catching up to me!" Duo called out over his radio, knowing that Nazyr could hear him perfectly.

"Hold on! I'm coming in for an intercept!" Came the reassuring reply. Duo, using every last bit of his perceptive senses, was barely able to make out Nazyr's form approaching…moving at Meteor Crash speed hindered his directional abilities immensely, but it was the only thing sustaining him from death.

Nazyr's thinner form screamed in rage as he collided with the Carrier, blue blade arcing and screaming as it tore against the purple one. An exhausted Duo shut off his Meteor Crash and let his wing thrusters slow him down, turning about to stare back at the battle.

Nazyr was in no way as skilled a sword duelist as Marla had been. But the Carrier had ignored Nazyr and focused on Duo, so he was so off balance when Nazyr approached that Nazyr's blows came dangerously close, unsettling the collected calm that the entity of purple energy had kept with him since the skirmish had begun a week ago.

"I'm coming in!" Duo barked, holding in a concussion charge of power close to his fist. His wing thrusters grew ready for their sudden burst…

"NO!" Nazyr cried out. "This bastard is MINE!!" Yet as the fight continued, Nazyr's edge over the Carrier grew decidedly weaker. Still, he continued on, screaming and hacking and blocking and spinning…

"Nazyr, you're being a fool! You can't take him alone!!"

"Duo, this is the last order I'm going to give you. SHUT UP!!" Nazyr screamed, blasting his thrusters to swoop away from a dangerously close hack. A stunned Duo could only hover in space, watching as his mentor defied all logic and fought on anger alone. "I know, you think I've gone nuts…But I've got to do this myself, Duo!! This bastard killed my FRIENDS…Our FAMILY!!"

Nazyr's smaller arm extended down and fired a piercing beam of blue light at the pursuing Carrier, following it along its path. The Carrier dodged the beam by bobbing aside, and his guard was lowered just enough that Nazyr was able to slam his helmeted head into the Carrier's throat. The blow jarred the Carrier back, giving Nazyr enough time and enough space to swipe his sword along his foe's chest, at long last striking a serious blow.

The Carrier howled out angrily, clutching at his chest and backpedaling away from Nazyr, gasping, even in the vacuum of space, for air that would not come. The battle had taken it out of Nazyr, and it was showing.

Duo hovered there in the space above the massive red and orange planet, watching in amazement as despite everything, Nazyr triumphed over the Carrier. Damage had been done…And at long last the conflict they'd arrived too late at to save the lives of their Watcher brethren showed signs of ending.

"Nice shot, Nazyr!" Duo said excitedly. Nazyr turned halfway about and smiled at Duo, flashing a thumbs up as he let his blue sword sink back into nothingness.

"I'm getting way too old for this." Nazyr muttered.

And just as he had finished saying that…

A gigantic blast of purple energy hit him in the chest, encircling him with its might. Nazyr screamed in agonizing pain as it crawled along every inch of his body, burning, striking, biting…

With a single motion, the energy collapsed in on itself…

And Nazyr vanished in the implosion.

Duo, once again stunned in terror, turned his gaze over to where Nazyr had sent the Carrier sprawling with his wounds.

The Carrier was up again…and the flames licking around his body were angrier than ever before.

* * *

I was terrified. I can admit that, because that is precisely the emotion that was running through my head. The final Carrier was beyond anything we'd ever faced…

_And now they were dead…_

Fear. Then and there I experienced fear. Before I had met Nazyr, life had been so much simpler…I followed the code in my head, I sought out Evil Energy, and I destroyed it. Meeting Nazyr had drawn me into this conflict…

_And now they were dead…_

Of course, I know now that if I hadn't met him, I would have eventually died at the hands of even the weakest of Carriers. So in some small part, my life had been prolonged. But that didn't help them now…No, they were gone. I was at the opposite end of the spectrum, facing the deadliest of Carriers. Life does have a sense of humor. It shows itself right before you die. Of course, Nazyr and Marla hadn't been able to see it…

_Because now they were dead._

The code pulsed inside of my mind, strengthening me, giving me even more power.

_**Directive Alpha: Seek out and destroy all sources of opposing energy. Rewritten(25:47): Opposing EnergyEvil Energy.**_

Fear could have destroyed me then. But tempered with my Directive…my only purpose for being alive…

It became a sword for my spirit.

So there you have it. You can treat fear two ways. You can let it consume you. Or you can consume it, let it strengthen you with purpose.

* * *

Duo stared to the resurrected Carrier, teeth clenched tightly as he pounded his fists together.

"It ends here, you monster…I WON'T LET YOU DO THIS AGAIN!!"

It might have been his imagination, but the purple skinned warrior may well have grinned back at him with a menacing stare. Duo's blue power sprung to life around him, a wellspring of intense and focused justice. The Carrier's own barrier of purple light leapt even larger, as if to intimidate the last surviving Watcher. The two stared at each other for the longest time…and then they snapped.

Hurling themselves at each other like wild cannonballs, Watcher and Carrier collided at breakneck speed. The Watcher's strength increased by the deep sense of purpose, they were at last evenly matched…

Blinding flashes of pure white light erupted wherever they connected, a deadly game of chicken that might well have claimed them both. It didn't matter to them…

In the final skirmish of the one week battle, finesse and style were thrown out the window. Everything was turned over to raw emotion, to endless fury, to pure mathematical statistics…

Whose power would last longer.

Clash after clash grew more focused, more intense. The first had been a tentative collision, a test. Now in the thirty-sixth unholy union of energy fields, the Carrier realized with grim and unfazing accuracy his own strength was depleting far more rapidly than the Watcher's. And that would not do.

They pulled back from one another after yet another crash, and there the Carrier took his chance, releasing a blistering beam of power towards his foe, containing a very sizeable portion of his power. His hopes were riding on this one, brilliant shot…and he'd never once missed in his entire life.

The blast struck true, the hazy purple energies coalescing tightly around the blue energy field sustained by the Watcher. The Watcher groaned in pain, refusing to give into the gnawing screams from deep within his belly. He remembered the pain and the purpose of those who had came before him…and once more tapping into a force more than that contained inside of his power core, he brought his massive left hand in front of his face and clenched it tightly, forcing his power to expand out and push back against the crushing might of the Evil Energy.

The wall that threatened to engulf him vanished away from the superior force his spirit willed into existence, and once more he was freed. Carrier and Watcher stared at each other for the longest time, each glaring at the other with a fury that went beyond logic.

They did not know each other. They only knew they were enemies, and that was enough. Enough to force the final, desperate clash.

Watcher and Carrier smashed together with all their remaining fury, causing a massive explosion of light that obliterated the scattered remains of their fallen comrades too close to the blast. And then all fell quiet…For now it was done.

The both of them remained unconscious, wholly and completely absent from the world…the blast had jarred them both in the same manner, hurling them away from the massive gaseous planet and towards the bright star that gave its rays of warmth and gravity.

A pale blue light still clung to the Watcher, but the Carrier was so drained he merely skidded along. Both were far too exhausted, too far gone to wake up on their own.

Thus, for weeks, the two unconscious warriors continued along in the avenue of space, creeping past the massive Asteroid Belt without harm and growing ever closer to the star, every passing moment bringing them closer to that bright star that pulled them in.

But something stood in the way of their path…an object of such mass that it drew them in, negated the sun's own gravitic draw, and brought them into a degrading orbit.

It was a planet…a bright blue planet with wispy, hazy white clouds. A gem in the sea of harshness. A planet its inhabitants called Earth.

Such a planet capable of supporting life also had an atmosphere, and still fast asleep in their deep comas, the Carrier and the Watcher were drawn down through it, the blistering heat threatening to claim them both.

But the Watcher's wispy blue energy field protected him…it was only the Carrier who fell victim to the burning hot temperatures of re-entry, every part of his body burning and bubbling and tearing itself apart…

Save for the one thing that could survive the immense heat…the crystal clear spherical power core that glimmered with his Evil Energy, and a pair of connecting power transfer tubes extending from it.

Thus, weeks after the mysterious lights of Jupiter had vanished, and the planet had claimed a _Second_ nearly invisible ring about it, the inhabitants of Earth found themselves staring up into the sky, watching a pair of streaking plumes descend down upon the Earth…and strike somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

And that was how Duo ended up on Earth.

* * *

Mega Man gnashed at his jaw, holding his arms down at his side uselessly…He'd arrived on this island to track down some spaceborne debris that had recently crashed…debris that, Dr. Light had told him, had a powerful energy signature.

In the process, the Blue Bomber had discovered that this remote island, not listed on any map, had a reason for being unlisted. It was artificial. And it was Wily's.

This was where the mad scientist had been keeping himself these last few months since the Seventh Robot Rebellion. And Rock remembered how that one had ended…

_I'm going to do what I should have done a long time ago, Wily!!_

_**No…you can't…you're a robot, you can't hurt me!! **_

_I am MORE than a mere robot…_

Pushed further into rage than ever before, it had been just him and Wily in the lowest sub sub-basement of the newest Skull Castle. The endless night had been Rock's only company as he pushed deeper and deeper into its bowels, a stormy brew bubbling about on the outside with its own agenda. Back then, in the early summer months of 2181, Mega Man had once more been forced to take up arms, take up the never-ceasing mission to end Wily's maniacal schemes. Six months of rest had not been enough.

Rock was getting tired. He'd been fighting off Wily's cronies and Wily's War Machines for more than ten years now. Ten long years, in which he'd seen friends die in this madness, in which he had lost his simplistic outlook on life…In which eventually he'd reached a precipice, farther and higher than any other, and with far more wide reaching consequences.

His Buster had been staring straight into the wide, horror filled eyes of Wily. Never before had Rock ever gone that far, to fire at Wily when he wasn't in one of his warcraft…But as the klaxons wailed and the 7th Skull Castle began to shake itself apart in self-destruction, Wily's psychotic nightmares finally sprung to life.

_I'm going to do what I should have done a long time ago!!_

He would have broken the First Law in doing so. And logically, defying the first law…

_**A robot must never harm, or through inaction allow harm to come to a human being**_

Should have caused his mind to shut down. Even thinking about it should have caused him immense pain.

But that trauma, that built-in self-destruct feature of his brain had not activated that night. His rage against Wily and his madness and all the horror he'd caused had reached the boiling point…and the teakettle had whistled loud and hard.

His mind remained free, remained unharmed and unchecked by the First Law. In fact, its absence was so severe that Rock even forgot about it. In that rash, split second, as his Buster whined and built up a charge for a supershot, he could have well fired…and his brain wouldn't have made a peep about it.

A pile of debris had fallen on Wily then, trapping him in a cage which he could not escape. It was that act which stopped Rock.

The surprise of debris falling down on top of Wily and all around them jarred Mega Man back to his senses. Then he realized how very absent the Laws were from his system at that moment…

His emotions had overpowered EVERYTHING. He could have killed Wily in that state of mind…

_No…_

He'd stumbled back, and lowered his Buster, just as Bass and Treble warped in out of nowhere and rescued Wily. Bass had given Rock a sneering taunt before vanishing…And Mega Man had warped away from that deathtrap not long after.

He remembered that long walk home…thinking of all that had happened, and how close, how very close he had come that night to crossing the threshold. It frightened him so terribly…

_In my quest to stop Wily…I have become a monster myself._

Thus, for the last few months, Mega Man had done his best to push away all emotions, to focus only on the mission and deny that part of him which made him feel human. If only so he could not…could not even conceive of killing Wily. Of killing any human.

And now that nightmare had returned. This was Wily's island, and whatever had crashed…had been taken by Wily. From what Mega'd been able to see of it, it resembled a glass sphere with a deep glowing purple light within, and a pair of straggling tubes off the sides.

And now he was flying off in his saucer, laughing his crazed head off and leaving Rock with a pile of charred robotic remains behind him, and a crater in front. Rush stood at his side, gently nudging the Mega Ball around with his nose and whining a bit.

"Nothing we can do about him now, boy." Mega Man said quietly. He looked behind him to the rubble of the island's guardian, a massive shelled robot that he'd quickly disposed of. "And nothing around here left to worry about destroying." Rush nodded his head in agreement, and the Blue Bomber stepped up to the ridge of the crater.

"What the…?" He said, now surprised. There was something left in the crater… "Hey, Rush! Take a look at this!" The red armored robotic mutt bounded up beside Mega Man, and stared down with a scrutinizing gaze. Whatever was left…was big, humanoid, and had a pair of green metallic wings on its back.

"Rush, this is…some kind of robot!" Mega Man exclaimed, still stating the obvious.

Just then, Rush barked to warn Mega of an incoming transmission, then opened up a compartment in his back and brought out the holographic projector.

"…an! Mega Man!!" It was of course, a pale image of Doctor Light that appeared, calling through Rush's transponder to see how Rock was doing.

Mega Man stared down at the cumbersome blue and red armored robot, lying motionless and seemingly inactive with its tiny green wings.

Doctor Light was the world's foremost authority on robots in the entire world. But Mega didn't know how even he'd deal with this.

* * *

Three and a half days later, Mega Man returned to Doctor Light's laboratory, fresh from his victory against Tengu Man in California. But held close to him was four small, grenade sized spheres of durable plastics. The quirky thing about them was that they had come from the most recent batch of Robot Masters Wily had left for Mega Man to deal with.

"These?" Light mused, rubbing at his temple as he looked down at the readouts of all four of them, carefully stored in a vacuum sealed scanning cylinder. "These are energy sources…Although I've never seen anything like them on Earth." He shook his head quickly. "Powerful energy sources…something this powerful must not fall into the hands of Dr. Wily!"

The Blue Bomber took his helmet off and brushed at his wild black mane of hair.

"Too late for that, dad." Light looked up to his youngest son with surprised eyes. "I found this bunch in Wily's four newest Robot Masters. And the color…When I confronted him on that island, he made off with a sphere that resembled these. Only it was a lot bigger. I'd bet anything he just transferred the energy from that large sphere into these smaller ones and stuck them in his robots."

"Oh, that's just great…" Light mumbled, jerking into spasms as he hacked up a wad of phlegm. Mega frowned.

"Doc, you know that your pipe smoking isn't healthy for you."

"I know, I know." Light sighed. "It isn't helping my lifespan any…but the way I see it, all that radiation I exposed myself to during the Wars of 2040 didn't help much either. Still, let's focus on the problem at hand. Wily never does these things in just four…there's ALWAYS eight. Which means that there's four more Robot Masters running around powered by this energy--not to mention Wily himself."

"Yeah, but they haven't exactly sent out invitations yet. How do I find him?" Mega grumbled.

"We may be able to track their energy emissions in the radar room." Light offered hopefully. He turned around and looked at the giant robot lying on the table. "Besides, this fellow isn't going to be leaving anytime soon." Mega Man and Dr. Light walked out of the laboratory adjoined to his house, mumbling between themselves about whatever else came to mind. The lights shut off upon sensing that Light and Mega had both left, shrouding the room in darkness.

Save for the glimmering pale light that emanated from the energy spheres Mega Man had brought back.

* * *

_Alive._

I was alive. Despite that climactic battle, despite how very weary and exhausted it had made me, I was alive. My mind went active as my eyelids slid up, letting my eyes blink back into focus as I let my surroundings sink in. As if to confirm that I wasn't dreaming, I held up my left hand and stared at it, then clenched it tightly.

My eyesight adapted quickly to the darkness…I soon realized I wasn't out in space anymore. No, this resembled…I didn't know what it resembled. I'd never seen anything like it. I just knew I hadn't crashed here.

But then something caught my eye…A glowing ovoid mirror set in a box frame…

And standing beside it in a cylinder was the one thing my life was dedicated to destroying.

_Evil Energy._

Four tiny spheres full of it…and as I held that cylinder in the palm of my hand, my frightened eyes realized why I was staring at it. It frightened me. It meant I had failed Nazyr…Failed Marla…failed all the Watchers.

"He…He still lives…" Shaking in fear and anger, I clenched my massive hand into a fist, crushing the cylinder and destroying the tiny remnants of Evil Energy.

I could sense an unnaturally large portion of it somewhere beyond…yet close. There were weaker signals as well, but those could be ignored for the time being. I had to destroy the main source!!

Thus, with a scream of purpose I willed myself to the winds of fate and let my power take over, drawing me near to that source, blasting through everything in my path that stood in my way.

In power, I was strong. Strong enough to reach stalemate with the first, and deadliest Carrier I'd ever run across. Strong enough now to finish what untold hordes of Watchers had started before me. Strong enough to rid the Galaxy of another source of Evil Energy.

But my mentalics remained as pathetic as ever…And now, there was no Nazyr left to guide me.

I was alone.

* * *

I must have gone halfway around the world…I knew I was on a world because once I was airborne I see the curvature of the horizon, the bright sky and atmosphere above, and even more impressively…life.

Across high mountains of blinding white reflected light, something Nazyr had once called "Snow and Ice", across barren plains that resembled the planet we'd spent most of our training at, and bodies of water that seemed endless…a lush, diverse world full of promise and hope…

And poisoned by the stark presence of Evil Energy.

Eventually, I got close enough to it I could pick up a more precise bead. Somewhere down below the deserts lay the place where it grew.

It was getting stronger too…feeding. Evil Energy could grow and expand, if it remained in the presence of a being with a dark mind long enough. And at its rate of growth that I could sense even at this distance, it had fallen into the hands of a very dark mind. I'd seen a Carrier in action…yet all of its anger, its hatred was mimicked, forced…artificial. The Evil Energy was tainted with the thoughts of the person in control of it, and those thoughts frightened me.

_I had to get down there…_

Nazyr…Marla…and all the others had died so this menace might be quelled.

_And it still lived. IT STILL LIVED._

There was no one I could turn to for help…I was alone in this mission, in a place I did not know, on a world whose path I could not interfere with…

I turned my thoughts aside and skimmed down to the surface, blasting my way through the side of the structure with flashing orange yellow lights.

The Evil Energy was somewhere beneath it.

I hadn't gotten too far when I heard footsteps approach from behind me. And then I met him.

* * *

Mega Man slipped through the hissing gateway and emerged onto the other side, finding himself in a large, rectangular sized room all too familiar to him. Many was the time he'd fought in a room like this, sometimes with enemies that took up 3/4 of it up by their bulk.

The robot blinked his eyes a few times and stared over through the slight darkness to the lumbering figure standing with his back turned to the Blue Bomber.

Finally, the larger robot turned, staring at Mega Man with large, white gaping eyes. Every part of him looked crafted for battle, every part of him…

Spoke of great ability resting underneath that metal skin. Mega Man's first thought was that it might be another robot of Doctor Wily's. It wouldn't be the first time that the sometimes gullible Blue Bomber had brought home an ailing warrior, only to have that same victim blast their way out of the building. Still, there was something different in the giant blue and red robot's eyes…something deeper than Bass's scorn and ego. A tiny spark set in his eye's glint that hinted at a purpose, and a firm jaw that silently marked his dedication to it.

"You are…Who are you?!" Mega Man demanded, taking a step forward. He didn't shift a hand into a Buster quite yet, unsure about the newcomer.

The massive robot glared at Mega Man for a long moment, then finally spoke up, through a complex process of deep-mind translation circuits.

"Don't try to stop me from completing my mission!!" He raged. Mega Man took a few steps back, then shook his head and formed a Buster.

"You aren't going anywhere until I get some answers." Rock stated flatly.

"You have no idea who you're facing, do you?" The alien robot quipped tersely. Mega Man shook his head with a wan smile and let his Buster's whine fill the room.

"That question's mutual, John Doe Binary."

"Then prepare to die." Mega Man's adversary snapped, hovering up into the air on a bright pillar of blue light, then clenching his fists tightly together and screaming as a brief burst of the same color shot out from every pore of his body. Mega Man merely relaxed his body, letting his instincts take over.

Neither gave the other any space…The gigantic robot tried to flash around the room in a blur of blue, like some sort of a giant cannonball. Rock merely slid his way underneath the strikes that came too close for comfort, his eyes watching the angled trajectory his opponent bounced around on, and placing a shot whenever the massive robot stopped to rebuild steam.

Likewise, the helmeted, mis-proportioned warrior treated Mega Man in the same way, watching and waiting for the tiny blue armored fool to fire his shot--in either laser or fireball form--and then jumped over it, turning about to unload a concussion blast where he hoped the gunman was standing.

Slowly, it began to dawn on them both that they were fighting an experienced opponent who by purpose was holding back. And that was when, after jumping over another of Mega Man's supershots, the behemoth landed and discovered much to his surprise that his mentalic abilities had once more clicked themselves on.

He saw into the mind of his opponent…not too much, just enough that he saw this one fought for a righteous cause as well, despite the confusion and torment in his emotions. And that was enough to make him stop the attack.

"I sense a strong sense of justice in you…" He muttered, lowering his arm down and letting his blue aura quietly draw itself back into him. "Who are you?" Now truly intrigued, he found that his mentalics slipped back away, leaving him blind once more.

His opponent lowered his own weapon as well, yet was denied the chance to answer the question. An unfamiliar four tone whistle rang through the room, only moments before a blistering red and gray beam shot down from above and formed yet another short statured warrior, only this one had a deep visor covering his eyes and a yellow scarf dangling out from behind him…among other differences.

"Mega Man!" The newcomer called out.

"Protoman!" Mega replied, somewhat relieved to find the presence of his older brother in the room as well.

The alien robot examined the two of them for a long moment, quietly absorbing their names into his memory before deciding that one, he didn't exactly feel too talkative at the moment, and two, he'd wasted enough time and that Evil Energy wasn't getting any weaker. So before the other two could react, he surrounded himself in his bluish power and blasted through yet another wall, descending down the shaft it covered like a bloodhound to a fox.

Calmly, he realized that the energy emissions he was sensing was coming from a gigantic structure of some sort lying over an undiscovered pocket of molten rock that spat off fumes. A place like this would be harmful to most life, Duo noted. Also, he didn't get too far without noticing the gigantic sentry…and even though it too was tainted by the Evil Energy, it was far from his main focus. He merely chose to fly low and avoid being spotted by the superstrong creature.

With a roar, he came to a hovering halt in the thick hot air and fired off a beam of light towards the structure.

It dispersed hundreds of feet away from it, broken apart by shimmering lights that only then appeared--and vanished just as quickly.

"Terrific." Duo grumbled. He hovered there, thinking of a way to get inside…

His mentalics kicked in again, and suddenly he saw how, as his perspective shifted above the planet and formed a map of sorts…a square where he was now, and four circle oddly placed around it.

Effectively, this bases' barrier was being fed from four power locations nearby. And until those were dismantled, not even he could break through it.

His mentalics faded away again, allowing Duo to hear the painful screams of someone nearby. And Duo knew who it was, too, as he blasted off to track its location.

It was that same blue warrior who he'd dueled with not long ago…a blue warrior the red one had referred to as 'Mega Man'…

* * *

Robots could most definitely feel pain…and right now, Mega Man was wishing desperately he could shut off that particular function of his neural relays. Electrical energy arced and burned through him, causing him to convulse in every manner and fashion, unable to escape because of the same tightly clenched fist of the Fortress guardian that was trying to kill him in the first place. His screams were endless, pained cries that echoed about the massive underground chamber for the sick pleasure of that Bastard Wily's ears.

And thankfully, it stopped…only twenty seconds away from when Rock's systems would have gone critical and shut him down permanently. Thankful once again for close calls that always leapt to his aid, the Blue Bomber yelled with a grunt and broke free of the terrible vise grip holding him. As he cluttered to the ground, he tore off towards the section of the cave wall that held his mutt.

"Rush…are you okay?" The robotic dog ruffed weakly, then opened his fluttering eyes in confirmation. Rock turned around, seeing two things nearby. One, the hand of the Fortress guardian that had held him so close to death, only now sliced clean off of its user…

And a flash of blue light as the mysterious robot appeared beside him, eyes staring ahead towards the lumbering threat drawing nearer to its wary prey.

"Who are you?" Mega Man repeated. Finally, the newcomer turned his gaze to Rock and answered that very question.

"My name is Duo. I was born for the sole purpose of seeking out and destroying negative energies in the Universe."

The thuds of the Fortress guardian drew nearer, and Mega Man held Rush closer, realizing how very damaged his mutt was, despite the dog's unfailing attitude.

"Well Duo, I'm Mega Man…And obviously you're not one of Wily's cronies then." He looked up to the lumbering figure approaching them. "But right now, we don't have the time to discuss this…"

Both fighters jumped for their lives, just as the robot's other fist connected with the ground where they had stood moments before. Before Mega could shift Rush's weight and ready his Mega Buster, his new associate Duo had already leapt onto the attack.

With power and speed that stunned even Mega Man, Duo's left, super huge arm ignited in blue flames, just as he swung it down and threw the energy like a sort of slicing blade. The effect was immediate as half of the guardian's face was carved off and began to fall to the ground.

Before the first piece of the robot had even hit the ground, Duo had landed in a crouching position and exploded upwards into the chest of the robot in a blaze of blue, emerging beyond the robot's back with something clenched in his hand.

Badly damaged, and unknown to Rock, now lacking its energy source, the behemoth fell victim to gravity and collapsed backwards into the lava pits. Duo landed beside Mega Man, a glowing purple light held in his palm.

"You're incredible…if you'd fought like that with me, I might have…"

"And if you'd fought with your spirit instead of just your body, I'd be in trouble as well." Duo corrected. Mega finally took notice of the object in Duo's palm.

"Hey, that looks like one of the things I gave to Doctor Light!"

"This is what your people would call, 'Evil Energy.'" Duo explained calmly, even though his anger boiled up fresh. "It seeks out evil minds, and grows stronger by them, reproducing itself and spreading to cause even more devastation. With such growth, it could take over this whole planet in a matter of days…I must STOP IT!" He exclaimed, punctuating his sentence by clenching his hand into a fist and disposing the Evil Energy into vapors and harmless particles.

He turned about and stared across the sea of lava between them and the giant structure.

"I can sense the original Evil Energy inside of that building, but…" He lifted his left hand up and fired off another beam of blue to prove his point. Once more, the field crackled and dispersed his shot. "That barrier prevents me from getting to it."

"You're definitely not from around here, are you?" Mega Man asked, one eyebrow raised.

"You're right, I'm not." Duo said back. "But why does that matter?"

"Because one of the things I should do with you once we find the time is explain the whole situation here on planet Earth, Duo. Especially the events surrounding the person inside that Tower. His name's Wily. Just remember that."

"There is darkness surrounded with that name." Duo said darkly. He shook his head. "The barrier is drawing power from locations around this area. Until those locations are visited and the energies cut off, I cannot gain entry."

"Hey, going in there is as much my problem as it is yours." Mega Man interrupted firmly. "So if there's anything I can do to help out, just name it."

"I appreciate it…Mega Man." Duo said. "I will leave it up to you to visit these locations and deal with the barrier's energy sources. Meanwhile, I will scour the rest of this planet for the other sources of Evil Energy that remain."

"Roger!" Mega Man chirped. Never one for small talk, Duo shot off in his usual blaze of blue. Mega Man charged on back the way he'd came, Rush clicking at his heels. The both of them had their work cut out for them now.

* * *

Duo and Mega Man met back at Wily Tower not more than two days later.

"I assume your mission was a success?" Mega Man asked, folding his arms. Duo nodded darkly.

"The last remnants of Evil Energy flow through this place…and they have grown stronger." Once again, Duo remembered how his comrades had died to end this plight…and how it all rested on him. And his eyes turned to the figure beside him, Mega Man, who was only as big as his left forearm. This one fought with as much dedication as he did…if not more.

Testing the barrier again, he fired off another beam of blue energy. This time, he was pleasantly surprised when it passed through and hit a tiny robotic bird sentry that wandered too close to the powerful shot.

"I finished my half of this as well. Now it's time for the traditional infiltrate the Fortress." Mega Man grumbled. Duo turned to him.

"You have done this before, Mega Man?"

"Seven times before. And it never gets any easier." The Blue Bomber offered. "Still, I can tell you how this goes. I try to infiltrate my way through the back door, the underways…And it's always worked. Sure, he's figured out that's what I always do and so he has traps and guardians and junk like that…But it's a far cry better than trying to attack his bases head on and face all the missile batteries and crap he's obsessed with."

"You forget, though…I do not function like you." Duo added. He stared at the base. "I shall distract the main forces while you sneak in."

"If you think that's going to help me any, you'd be wrong…" Duo's eyes burned at his comrade.

"Realize something right now, Mega Man. I do things my way, and I get results. Now let me do what I can. He might well try a change of tactics, this…Wily person." Mega Man shrugged.

"I won't stop you. I'm just warning you this gets crazy."

"A battle between 40 or so Carriers and Watchers gets crazy. This is relatively easy."

"Whassat? Carriers and Watchers? Who are they?" Mega Man asked, utterly confused. Duo shook his head.

"I shall explain…when our mission here is finished." Duo leapt up into the air and hovered for a moment, looking down at Mega. "You fight with great determination, Mega Man. I hope to see you again when we cross paths with Wily." With that, he shot off towards the aerial forces about the outer perimeter of Wily Tower. Mega Man clicked his tongue in amazement.

"The guy's either nuts…or damned good at his job." He was favoring the latter option as he kicked a box full of machine parts off of its sliding board and jumped onto it, triggering a downwards skid. Slowly at first, but then picking up speed, Mega Man held his arms in tight for balance as he 'shredded' his way towards Wily's newest Fortress.

A few smoke blowers and Spin-Bombers made their presence known to him…but Mega Man knew that most of Wily's attention was diverted to the crazy fool flying around in the air, blasting his way through hordes of sentries unlucky enough to be in his path.

He jumped off a ramp and went airborne, seeing the rest of his skittish path flying out before him. Anxious, he took a moment to look up to the growing conflagration overhead…

And could only whistle in stunned amazement as a bright blue blur surrounded itself with hundreds upon hundreds of smoky explosions.

Duo grunted as another swarm of sentries vanished from sight in a sweeping wave of his arms.

"Just how many mindless automatons does one madman need?!" He swore angrily. Still, even though he hadn't been able to pierce through yet and make his way to infiltrating the Tower, his efforts had distracted the main security force enough that his temporary associate Mega Man had been able to break in.

Of course, that had been almost an hour and a half ago, by this planet's time standard… It gave Duo pause as to just how efficient this Mega Man was. If he'd been in there, this would all be done with…

A low rumble suddenly disrupted Duo's mindset, and he put his energy shield on high to allow himself to stare at the noise's source.

It was of course, Wily Tower. Only now the very top portion of the structure, spire included was rising from the rest of the Fortress and climbing…not like a bullet, but rapidly enough Duo knew the move was intentional.

Much to his surprise, the floating portion of Wily Tower continued to climb, going up and up and up with no pause…

And then finally, after going up for almost a mile, with Duo following behind at an easily matched speed, the vertical tunnel's end crested open and bright sunshine stared down at them all.

Duo covered his eyes to allow them to adjust to the light, then stared to the Tower and the tunnel they'd just left. It closed behind them, once more as innocent a part of the landscape as any other.

His mentalics kicked in then, as he questioned just why this Wily would need to build a part of his base that was able to go on separately…granting him a vision of destruction that chilled him deeply.

_The Tower's spire, firing off invisible rays of death, melting cars and vaporizing innocents, its concussion missiles and guns blasting entire city blocks to rubble…its robot armies flooding the populace, making the streets bleed red…_

"No…" Duo groaned, thankful that the vision left him as quickly as the rest of his unpredictable mentalic abilities. Now at last, he knew why Mega Man pursued this Wily with as much grim determination as he did to Evil Energy. Because each was a threat that destroyed and maimed and murdered without remorse.

And it would take both him and Mega Man to stop Wily, now joined with the Evil Energy in a horrific union of darkness. Duo noticed that the robotic sentries were gone, no longer pursuing him. They were probably assigned to guard the structure's lower half…

And so he did the only thing he could. Knowing full well that Mega Man's life might depend on his aid, he charged in with every inch of his body charged by blue. The pathetic energy field, not nearly as strong as the Tower's original, was easily smashed through…as was the metallic hull that held the untold horrors within.

And as he hurled closer and closer to the highest level of the Tower, smashing through floors and ceilings and walls without a care or worry, he realized how very close this encounter was going to be. Already, he could hear Mega Man's strained cries of agonized rage, and Wily's insane laughter. And he knew it was Wily's as he heard it.

It was the most evil sound he'd ever heard.

* * *

"It's just gnawing at you, isn't it??" Wily sneered, staring out through the cockpit window of his newest Wilymachine down at his helpless foe.

Mega Man grunted and strained, yowling like an animal as the paralyzing spherical blast Wily had fired at him earlier on still held him down. And he could tell, just by how it felt that it was different…stronger…serving to weaken him as well as keep him restrained. Which meant it had to be a shot composed of that Evil Energy Duo was pursuing.

"It's always been like this, hasn't it?" Wily snickered darkly. Whether it was you or me, one of us was always on the losing end of a battle. Only now that fate has fallen to you!!"

"You're just as pathetic as ever, Wily!" Mega Man snapped back. "Don't you get it?! If I wanted to, I could have KILLED YOU. Ten times over!!"

"And for all your boasting, you never have…" Wily said dourly. "And I won't grant you that chance, Rock! This battle has been going on for more than a decade now, and at long last I have the power to put an end to you once and for all!"

"What, your new Evil Energy??" Mega Man grunted, managing to twitch the tip of his left foot underneath the paralyzing rays.

"I have more plans in me than you could ever hope to conquer, Rock…and some day, you will FAIL." He said it confidently, like a person holding the winning hand. "But those plans might never come to bloom. For now I have you right where I want you…in my GUNSIGHTS!!"

A helpless Mega Man could only stare in defeat at the massive barrel apparatus strapped underneath Wily's newest craft. Slowly, it began to power up until it shone in full glory of purple madness…

And just as the beam fired, a massive figure blitzed in front of Rock and charged the beam head on, screaming in full rage as blue clashed against purple.

"Wha…whaaaat?!" Wily screamed in surprise. Mega Man at long last snapped out of the paralyzing blast and got to a defensive stance.

"Duo!!" Mega Man cried. "Get out of the way, that thing's unstoppable!!"

"NO!" Duo roared, grunting as the force threatened to push him back. "It's NOT unstoppable…just DEADLY!!"

He erupted in further blue light, and then succeeded in charging the beam to its source and bodyslamming both the cannon and Wily's warcraft away. The cannon exploded in a flash of light…

But a wounded Duo and an intact Wilymachine still remained.

"Curse that robot!!" Wily snapped, glaring at the both of them. Mega Man ran next to Duo and helped to support the lumbering figure.

"Duo, are you all right?" Mega Man asked quickly. Duo barely managed to shake his head.

"That attack…took a lot out of me, Mega Man. I can't move…"

"Thanks to you, I have lost my super beam cannon!" Wily screamed. He stopped halfway through, then smiled darkly. "But just as well…now I can take the both of you out in a single blow!!"

Or rather…he would have, had a familiar four tone whistle not made its presence known.

Protoman shot down from above, coming seemingly from nowhere. He turned to Mega Man with a grim stare.

"I'll get this big fella outta here, Mega Man."

"Thanks, Protoman!!" Rock called back. Protoman lay a single hand on Mega's temporary ally and pushed a button on the back of his plasmaburst proof shield…warping them both to safety.

And then it was just Rock and Wily.

"You will not escape me as easily, Rock." Wily spat. Mega Man turned up and held his Buster by his side, letting Wily hear the whine of it charging. His eyes burned like cold fire as he stared at his nemesis for seconds on end.

"I'm not running, Wily." He said in steely determination.

"Then you will die." Wily cackled. Mega Man merely shook his head.

He'd heard that one before.

* * *

Duo and Protoman could do little more than remain on the outside. One too badly drained of power to assist, and the other deigning to protect him, they stood in the wasteland and watched as Wily's spire continued to hover in the air, its master too caught up in the battle with Mega Man to fly it off anywhere.

"Your planet has much barren wasteland…" Duo muttered, eager to break the stony silence.

"Yep. And the funny part is that humans caused it." Protoman growled back. Duo turned to him, an eyebrow upraised.

"Humans?" Protoman turned to Duo, a disbelieving smirk on his face.

"What, you can't tell the difference?"

"Are you a human?" Protoman snorted.

"I consider that an insult, bub. Nope, I'm a robot, the same as you and Rock. Wily is a human. So is the guy who created Rock and me, Doctor Light. And that's just two of the countless billions left on this globe." Duo shook his head in amazement.

"By your standards, I am a…a robot." Duo shrugged. "Well, I guess I've been called worse things."

"And what do you call yourself?"

"I am a Watcher." Duo replied simply. He turned around. "But you mentioned that this place, like so many other ones on your planet, was caused by humans."

"Yeah. I take it you're not from this neck of the woods, right?" Protoman asked. "I checked up with Light…said that you probably came from that pair of meteorites that crashed recently." Duo shrugged. "Anyhow, Duo, yes. The funny thing about humans is they're so damned unpredictable. Some live to cause destruction and violence, and some live to create peace and life and harmony. About 40 years ago, back during the time period Historians like to call the Wars of 2040, the entire planet of humans finally just blew up. Populations and tensions had been rising unbelievably, and all the efforts of everyone to try and stop it from happening failed. In the end, humanity ended up losing control, falling victim to their dark impulses. The end result is that the wars that lasted for almost an entire decade ended up causing untold ecological damage. These wastelands for instance, like this one, were actually massive battlegrounds. In some places, nuclear devices were used."

"A weapon of mass destruction?" Duo asked, unfamiliar with the term the red ands gray robot had used. Protoman nodded darkly.

"Precisely. Now this particular wasteland exists in what is known here on Earth as the Middle East. This place had tensions, racial and religious strains that stretched back THOUSANDS of years. This was one of the places that used nuclear weapons."

"And it's empty…because life can't live here."

"Yeah." Protoman said quietly. "It was bad before the wars, when it was just desert. The reason this place got hit was that it was a major source of humanity's primary energy source--fossil fuels."

"I take it there was a shortage that might have triggered the crisis."

"It didn't help matters." Protoman said tersely. "Nowadays, humanity's learned from its mistakes from the most part. They either make their gasoline and diesel fuels from natural organic sources like plants, or they use other sources. Wind, solar, and in some places, even fission and most recently fusion."

"What are you powered by?"

"A microfusion tank." Protoman said simply. He looked to Duo. "So what's your energy source?" Duo replied by summoning a weak blue field around his right hand. Protoman whistled in amazement.

"Nice trick…but what's it called?"

"Good Energy, I suppose." Duo said. He looked to the Tower. "Mega Man's nemesis, this Wily…found a large supply of Evil Energy from my enemy's carcass. If there was that much left of it. It's my job to get rid of it all."

"You feeling any better now?" Protoman asked. Duo nodded.

"My power replenishes itself over time."

It was then that Wily Spire, the floating part of his Fortress began to tremble and shudder in midair before their very eyes. With a sudden speed that barely acted within the laws of physics, the superstructure plummeted downwards and crashed against the ground. Some parts of the Spire exploded, having critical portions to them. The various Fusion reactors about the Spire had powered down…otherwise the explosion would have been more dramatic, taking the whole thing with it in a mushroom-like cloud…that usually ended up in the shape of a macabre death head.

And somewhere in that mess of rubble was Mega Man.

Protoman and Duo could only watch helplessly as a fitful Wily flew off, laughing insanely in yet another one of his saucer-like craft.

The red and gray robot turned to Duo, his face grim.

"Well, I hope your power supply's come back, friend. It's too late to snag Wily…so we have to get Mega Man out of there before anything else bad happens."

Protoman spoke with a certain aloofness to the situation about him, but the observant Duo noted silently he was hiding a lot more of his dread than he wanted to show.

Cautiously, slowly, the two started walking towards Wily Spire in all its collapsed ruin. They just hoped they'd find something worth saving.

* * *

My mentalics would always be like this. Until I found a Watcher more skilled at the mental arts than I was, that would be their only level of power.

However, the one mentalic ability I had complete control over was my ability to sense Evil Energy. It was this skill I used to direct my search. I could see Protoman somewhere off behind me, sifting through every piece of rubble he could find.

_But he didn't have mentalics…He couldn't just search out something by the impression of its energies, could he??_

And yet, for a brief moment I wondered if even my energy scanner was wrong. For while Protoman searched in the remains of Wily Spire, my guided instincts were leading me AWAY from it…to nothingness. To more wasteland.

And then I stopped doubting myself. Because there he was. Lying flat on his back, one arm stretched perpendicular to his body and one laid across his stomach.

And then as I stood over him, I realized with a falling heart why I'd been able to find him.

_This is not good…he's become infected by the Evil Energy…_

I knew the symptoms and the causes of this phenomenon all too well. A person of a strong, just mind grows weak…and that is when, like a parasite, the Evil Energy latches onto them. Left alone long enough, they will eventually be killed by it. Because Evil Energy destroys forces of the opposite nature.

Forces like me…and forces like Mega Man.

But for him, there was hope. He hadn't been afflicted with it long…mere minutes, by Earth's time standard.

With a mighty roar, I ignited my oversized fist and brought it down. But not to slice him apart…

I stopped it short, pressing lightly against his body…seeking to draw the Evil Energy out to a stronger power opposite of its nature. That was how I cleansed things of Evil Energy.

But something happened as I continued to pull the last remnants of Evil Energy on Earth from his body…

_My mentalics…kicking in again…_

It was there I saw all the pain in Mega Man's…Rock's…mind.

How he'd been fighting for more than a decade against impossible odds, never once giving up…putting his own life at risk to save the lives of others, even simple minded creatures…And how very tired of the battles he was, how close he'd come to crossing the edge of his sanity.

Pity. That is what I felt for him then. But he was strong. As strong minded as I was, although probably more.

My mentalics shut off again, leaving me back outside of his mind, simply pulling the last remnants of Evil Energy free. With a conscious thought, I fed my own power to it, shrinking it down and down, until at last it vanished forever.

When I'd found him, Mega Man had looked on the verge of death. Now, he would live.

"With your help…this planet _will_ survive." I said to his sleeping form with a smile. And although he was not awake, a calm placidness fell over him then.

And then Protoman showed up. I left him to take Mega Man home, having my own objectives to see to.

Space was what called me now. The continued fight. And for now, at least…I could leave the battle on Earth to Mega Man.

* * *

So Duo had thought, at least…Having no visions of where to go in the galaxy, the sole survivor of the massive battle over Jupiter consoled himself to cleanup detail.

By Earth people's standards, his kind…the Watchers, and more than likely the Carriers as well, were robots. An artificial form of life, Duo was led to understand, constructed solely to serve their creators.

_Hardly a thought that makes me feel cheerful about what I'm doing,_ he thought as he clumped another mass of Carrier remains and threw them into the gas giant. Leftover Evil Energy he destroyed, using leftover Watcher Energy. Their bodies, the part that could alter humanity's course the most if found, he discarded by letting Jupiter claim them. It was a macabre act, but the danger to humanity's natural development was too great for Duo to ignore. It was as integral a duty as was eliminating Evil Energy.

He kept Marla's body around last. It hadn't been hard to spot, one of the few that had remained relatively intact from the struggle. She still was dead, gone beyond his ability to pull her back to the living world.

"Marla…The heroes of Earth, Mega Man and Protoman…They said I was a robot." Duo spoke softly, his back turned to her free-floating corpse. "And to Earthpeople, the only reason that robots were made was to be servants."

He turned to her. "Is that what we are, Marla?? Servants?" She still was silent, and Duo knew she couldn't talk.

"I just don't know anymore, Marla…it was simpler before, when it was just me and Nazyr and the promise of battle with the Carriers. I didn't have these doubts about my existence, about my creators before. And now I do."

Mournfully, Duo pushed Marla's body towards Jupiter, sending her into a degrading orbit that would eventually disintegrate her form forever. It was the only fitting thing he could offer her.

"We Watchers were scattered to the stars, Marla…I only hope I do the right thing by scattering your atoms." And then Marla too faded from view.

Sadly, Duo hovered off to the way he'd come from, towards a smaller reddish planet he'd seen beyond Earth and before the massive ring of rocks that separated the gas giants from the crust planets.

_There's so much I don't know…that I might have known, had Marla lived…_

Jupiter's unnatural second ring was gone now, cleaned up by Duo's efforts. He was tired, he was confused, and he didn't know what he was supposed to do. With everything else in doubt about his own role, it was all too easy to succumb to the forces of his energy and blast off in a blaze of speed, trapped somewhere between life and death as all was given over to his strength for rapid transport.

"Just what do I do now, Nazyr…" He whispered, seeking the consoling presence of a voice now forever silenced.

"Just what do I do now…"

* * *

When all you have is questions, it becomes a lot harder to be content, to move on.

_All Watchers were robots by Earth standards…artificial life built to serve._

And if we were built to serve, the purpose of that service was all too clear.

_Seek out and destroy Evil Energy and its Carriers._

I knew this now. How even though my role was necessary, how it was just…I had been enslaved into its stead. Had I been given a choice? No. And still, I had no inklings of the far deeper questions that rattled inside of my mind.

_Just who made us?? And what caused that action??_

It was something that Marla might have known…were she still alive. She had been the oldest of the Watchers, the most knowledgeable about everything. Nazyr hadn't had the answers. I hadn't. But Marla might have.

If we were mere servants…if Carriers served the same role…then how far back did this struggle go?? Were we created, perhaps, by some organic intelligent life to fight a continuing war between them? A centuries old dispute that saw the rise of Carriers and Watchers to do the battling…

And what if they were gone now, these 'Creators'…What if, in the end their own lifespans were shorter than ours, like a human's lifespan?? They might all be dead…but us, their instruments of conflict still remained. Ever aging, yet ageless. We measured time in Decacycles…a measurement which came out to about ten of Earth's years roughly.

And what if…

_May mercy grant me peace…_

What if at long last, the climactic battle over the red and orange gas giant in Earth's solar system had been the final strike?? What if there was no more Carriers, no more Watchers left??

_What if…I was alone…_

And then, somehow I knew I wasn't. I stretched out with my deep troubled mind, looking for the presence of Evil Energy. And I could see it nowhere within my range.

It was gone. So what of me, then?? Was my mission over? My Creators, if they existed or ever did, never thought that far ahead. I had no Directive as to what I should do after the Evil Energy was gone.

But what I could see was Earth. A glimmering gem of hope after so much tragedy. And somewhere on it was Mega Man, still fighting, still living.

That's when I decided something. My own quest, my own purpose had been thrown into doubt for now. I would leave for Earth, return to that odd world with all its enigmas. I would find Mega Man…

And perhaps then…I might be able to call a place 'home'.

* * *

Bass, or Forte as he was sometimes called, was a creature of habit at times. One of the things he often did was try to face Mega Man, in his ever continuing quest to defeat his arch-rival and be the best. So that meant that once more, minus Treble, he was marching from the countryside that surrounded Tokyo towards Doctor Light's laboratory.

More like dashing. Today, he thought with all of his vengeance, would be the day that HE came out on top…not Mega Man. So dead set on that thought was he that he didn't even notice a strange figure dropping from the sky…until it landed fifteen feet in front of him.

Tall, with red and blue armor and a spike blade on his right shoulder, not to mention his squarish helmeted head and oversized left arm, it was an imposing figure that caused Bass to stop dead in his tracks.

"Excuse me." The robot said, in flawless Japanese. "I was looking for a friend of mine. Could you direct me towards the residence of Mega Man?"

Bass mulled over the comment for a moment, then glared arrows into him.

"I could, but it'd be easier to just go there." He said flippantly. "As luck would have it friend, I'm on my way there right now. Mega Man and I need to have a little talk." The robot absorbed the comment and nodded.

"Pleased to make your acquaintance. My name is Duo. And you are…"

"The name's Bass. Some call me Forte." Bass replied. "Although if you need to talk to the guy, I suggest you get moving now. Because when I'm through with him, he won't be doing much of anything."

That finally tripped something in Duo's mind. With narrowed eyes, he crossed his arms.

"So you wish to cause harm to Rock, eh?" Bass laughed.

"Well, I sure as Hell ain't bringing him flowers, bub!"

"I'm afraid I cannot allow that to happen." Duo said quietly. Now Bass's rage was focused on him.

"If you don't wanna get slagged buster, I suggest you hightail it outta here. I'm not letting anything stand in my way."

"Your threats are meaningless." Duo said calmly. "I will not allow harm to come to Mega Man, and if that means I must stop you by force, so be it."

Bass's right arm morphed into an ovoid gun of some sort. Duo recognized the design immediately…it was like Mega Man's weapon.

"You just try." Bass snarled.

Duo blinked at the figure for a few moments, then shrugged.

"Is that the best you can do?" Bass swore at the oversized robot and unleashed a multishot blast from his gun, hoping to overpower it.

All Duo did in response was to sweep his left arm in front of him, creating a blinding swath of blue light that absorbed the plasma with nary a second thought. For insult to injury, he blew the wave towards Bass, knocking the fool head over heels with the reeling blow.

Bass tried to no avail to clear the stars from his eyes…of course, that didn't help him when Duo hoisted him up by the scruff of his neck and bored his deep eyes into the ebony armored robot.

"Now then. I suggest you tell me which way leads to Mega Man's house."

"You're…that shining blue robot…" Bass groaned, realization sinking in from the reports Wily had given him after the 8th Robot Rebellion. "The one that took Wily's cannon out…"

Duo sighed. "Look, are you going to tell me which way to start walking or do I need to rough you up even more?"

Weakly, Bass pointed down the road.

"Can't miss it…lives on the very outskirts, in a house with a sort of ovoid structure attached to it." Duo's frown vanished a bit.

"Thank you." He dropped Bass to the ground, paying little heed to how the stunned robot collapsed. Bass glared daggers at Duo's back, but knew better than to try anything. This guy was just too much for him…probably too much for even Mega Man. But he wouldn't forget the insult.

"Now then, why don't you run along home, Bass? I don't want to be bothered when I meet with your arch-rival."

"Go truck yerself." Bass grumbled, using a different word than the automotive one. Duo turned about.

"Pardon?" Bass shook his head and warped off before Duo could get a response. The Watcher shook his head and continued walking. "Strange people…"

A half-hour later, by Earth time, Duo drew close enough to the house of Bass's description. Of course, he recognized it. It was the same house he'd blasted the ceiling out of when he'd first awoken on Earth. He'd have to apologize for that…

There were people sitting out on the porch of the structure, seeming to lounge about with the bright sun casting fair rays upon them. That was one thing Duo noticed right away…how the sky was. Clear, almost as blue as his energy, not a cloud in the sky, and not humid. Perfect.

He saw how they took notice of his approach. Finally, one came running, a familiar red dog running beside him.

"Duo!!" The figure called out happily. Duo frowned and waited for the figure to draw close. It was short, with shorts and a T-Shirt. Blue eyes against raven black hair. "Duo, when did you make it back??"

"Do I know you?" Duo said warily to the little boy. The adolescent seemed taken aback by the comment and frowned.

"What, you can't recognize me? I'm Mega Man!" Now Duo was stunned. As proof, the figure shimmered for a moment and reappeared in the familiar blue armor. "See?" Duo nodded slowly, and Mega Man let his armor disappear in favor of his more casual garb again. "I didn't think I'd ever see you again, Duo. What caused you to come back?"

"I had nowhere else to go." Duo said simply. The two started walking back towards the house, and the others came out as well. An old plump man with white hair all over his face, a petite and attractive female with blue eyes and blond hair, and another raven haired figure…only this one wore very large sunglasses.

"Hey guys, this is Duo!!" Mega Man said happily. The one in the glasses grunted.

"We've met before." Duo scrutinized the figure for a moment, then nodded.

"You would have to be Protoman."

"Please, around here I'm Blues." The character said, a raspy grin coming to his face. Mega Man pointed to the older man.

"And Duo, this is my creator. This is a human, and his name is Thomas Light. It could be said that he's the father of modern robotics!"

"Well…I suppose so." Light admitted sheepishly, extending out his right hand and letting Duo shake it. "Although I dealt more with mind processes. Before Wily went berserk, he was the half of our team that worked on the physical bodies. Now I deal with Cossack a bit more."

"Cossack??" Duo asked. Light nodded.

"Just another human in the field of robotics whose heart is in the right place. I would love another chance to study your workings, Duo…You're technology from parts unknown!"

"Sir, I can not let you do that in good conscience." Duo stated firmly. "This planet's technological development must continue at its own pace, without my interference." Light's face went crestfallen for a moment, but he nodded, understanding Duo's reasoning. "Still, I would also like to apologize for the damage to your roof." Light blinked a few times before the realization set in and he shook his head.

"No, it was an easy fix. You're forgiven, Duo…you saved my son's life."

"But…Mega Man is a robot." Duo argued, looking at Light in confusion. "He is not your biological progeny. How can you call him your son?"

"Because he, and his brother, and his sister…they're all I have." Light replied easily, although with a hint of sadness. "You must understand, Duo. Some things cross the boundaries of silicon and skin. He may be a robot, but I made him…I cared for him, and I still do. Just as I care for Roll and Blues, Rock is no different. It doesn't matter…they're my family." Duo nodded quietly, then turned to Roll.

"How do you do, miss…Roll?"

"Yeah, you got the name right." She said easily, performing a slight curtsy. "I've heard a lot of good things about you."

"There is one question I have for you all." Duo interrupted. "Do you know anybody by the name of Bass?"

The group outside of Light's house looked at one another for several long moments, then Mega Man nodded.

"He's a robot created by Wily…we first met up with him last year during the 7th Robot Rebellion, and he's nothing but bad news with a severe chip on his shoulder. Why do you ask?"

"Nothing of great importance." Duo said calmly. "I met him on the way here…he was dead set on seeking you out for a battle, I'm afraid. Luckily, I convinced him that that option might not be the wisest one."

"Bass doesn't exactly change his mind that easily." Blues muttered. "I don't exactly agree with my brother about how dangerous he is to us, but I can vouch for his stubbornness. If you stopped him from coming, you'd have to fight him."

"I did." Duo affirmed. Blues lifted up his glasses and stared with his squinted deep blue eyes to the larger robot.

"And you came out without any battle damage?"

"The fight lasted less than ten seconds." Duo continued. "There was little opportunity for him to cause any, and he isn't as skilled as Mega Man. Not with that little rapid-fire number."

"He still carries that??" Mega Man mused. Duo made a grunting noise, and Mega elaborated. "Not long ago, I had the rare opportunity to team up with Bass to deal with another robot of Wily's that had gone crazy." Blue put his glasses back on, and Mega Man smirked. "My brother doesn't like to talk about that much. He ended up getting sliced in half once at the beginning of the King Incident."

Blues harrumphed and turned his back on the posse.

"So what are you doing back here?" Mega Man asked more seriously now. Duo looked at him.

"There is no Evil Energy present anywhere in the galaxy within my sight, Mega Man. And seeing as I had nothing better to do, I was wondering…" Duo fidgeted, rubbing his massive toe in the dirt. "I was wondering if I might be allowed to stay with you and your family for a while."

"Sure you can!" Light said happily. "But if I may ask, why?" Duo smiled then, a very small one.

"Well…I just wanted to explore this concept of 'home'…"

* * *

"Mega Man!!" Sergei Cossack called out with a bellowing laugh. "What brings you and your clan to my humble abode?"

In a visit to the Siberian Citadel, that like any other was completely unexpected, Mega Man, accompanied by Blues and Duo marched into the inner sanctum without difficulty. Ever since Wily had lost interest in Cossack as a patsy and his aged castle, this place had grown quieter. Aside from the continual tinkering of the middle aged Cossack, so much younger than Light, it might also be called a tomb.

"Well, this big guy here is a new friend of ours." Mega Man said simply. "He goes by the name of Duo, and gave me a big helping hand in the last Robot Rebellion."

Cossack scratched at his light brown hair and peered over the rim of his glasses at the gargantuan robot.

"Well, Duo, you certainly are an imposing presence." Sergei Cossack spoke, of course, in Russian. Mega and Blues had no difficulty interpreting the language and speaking it fluently, thanks to their multi-lingual translation programs Light had developed for them. Duo however, had to take a few moments for the guttural phonetics to sink in before he caught on.

"It is how I was born." Duo said haltingly. Cossack laughed uproariously for a few moments and shook his head.

"Well, we certainly can't change that much now, can we?" Cossack replied, switching over to Japanese. Relieved, Duo picked up instantly.

"I'm afraid we cannot. And thank you for speaking in Mega Man's native tongue." Cossack waved his hand easily and motioned them into the dark interior of the heart of the Fourth Ring.

"Obviously, you aren't one of Tom's creations, Duo. Otherwise, you'd have his multi-lingual translation programs." Duo frowned.

"Sir?"

"Multi-lingual translation program." Mega added for the newcomer. "My dad also favors himself a bit of a language freak…can speak almost any language without an accent. Cossack's native tongue is a language called Russian."

"If Dr. Light hadn't gone into the field of robotics, I could easily have seen him instead go into the field of communication and networking." Cossack said with a small smile. "He is just that brilliant a man. Imagine, Duo…how different this world would be if Light had chosen a different path."

"Or if a different one had been chosen for him…" Duo mused softly, trying to stop his mentalics from awakening and giving him another vision. "So you are one of Dr. Light's allies against Wily, as it were?"

"Da', Duo." Cossack muttered, slipping back into Russian for a brief moment as his anger flared. "I hate Wily a great deal, and it is because of that I work so hard for Mega Man's benefit."

"His most successful projects was helping to upgrade my Mega Buster and building Beat." Mega added. Protoman kept silent, merely watching the scene from behind his glasses. Almost as if, if one were to fathom it, storing the memory for the years to come.

"Father, who are our guests?" Came a new voice. Duo recognized it as being a feminine one…a very young female.

The figure that strolled into their midst was a vision of beauty almost ready to blossom. Brilliant snow blond hair and striking eyes, with a figure that most supermodels would kill for.

"Aah, Kalinka!" Cossack called out cheerily. He turned to Duo as the teenaged girl bounded beside her father. "Duo, this is Kalinka, my very precious offspring." Duo examined her for a moment and then said something after blinking a few times.

"Is Kalinka a robot?"

"WHAT?!" Kalinka sputtered indignantly. Mega Man drew in a sharp breath, and Blues merely cracked a half smile.

"Oh, that's funny…" Blues said quietly. Duo shook his head.

"I do not mean to offend you, miss. But I have also met Miss Roll, and the two of you share enough resemblances, especially a lack of structural blemishes and defects, that I would inquire if you are an artificial being."

"I'm ORGANIC, you…" Kalinka fumed. She shut her mouth before a curse could come to mind thankfully.

"Eehh…" Blues finally interceded. He walked next to Kalinka and put an arm on her shoulder. "Duo, why don't you go with Mega Man and Cossack and meet the rest of the guys in this joint? I'll go with Kalinka for now."

* * *

"Your planet has seen much turmoil in a very brief amount of time." Duo said calmly, walking beside Cossack as he received the guided tour. Cossack nodded slowly, looking to Mega Man with a knowing smile.

"That much is evident all too quickly, Duo. A person just needs to look at me, or Light, or Mega Man to discover that. We almost destroyed ourselves forty years ago. But we didn't. Instead, humanity rebuilt itself, rebuilt the world. We created Treeborgs, cleaned up what pollution we could, switched over to organic diesels and solar and fusion, and brought on the advent of robotics."

"It could be said that it's due to the Wars of 2040 that robots today exist." Mega Man said wryly. "That's something that causes me to think real long and hard about how fortunate I am to be alive. If things had gone differently back then, I might not even be around."

"So what did humanity learn from this great conflict?" Duo posed.

"War is stupid in the first place, but nothing can stop that destructive nature." Mega Man growled. "What humanity learned was how NOT to destroy everything while they were doing it.

"An ancient text on Earth known as the Bible had a story in it that humanity had grown evil, and was punished for it. The world was flooded, and everyone died. Save for a man by the name of Noah and all the creatures and his family on a wooden ark he'd built to ride the waves of danger." Cossack added. "It's said that is where the first rainbow was seen…a sign by man's deity that he would never do such an act of terror again."

"Nope." Mega Man affirmed. "The hidden message in that promise is, God never promised HUMANITY wouldn't do something like that."

"And what relevance does this have?" Duo asked unabashedly.

"At the beginning of the Reconstruction after the Wars, a group of scientists worldwide came together to solve all the problems that erupted from that conflict. They called themselves 'The Second Rainbow'…and like the rainbow before, it was a symbolic promise. Only this time, it was a promise that humanity wouldn't cause such devastation ever again." Cossack continued.

"Both my father and Wily were in that organization." Mega Man chirped. Duo turned.

"I take it this…Second Rainbow no longer exists?"

"Da." Cossack replied. "Internal tensions caused the group to fall apart. Of course, by then it was 2067. So it didn't matter much, because they had already done a substantial amount of work, including the full advent of Treeborgs a decade ago."

"What caused the tensions?" Duo asked.

"Properly enough…it was us." Came a new voice. Duo and Mega froze for a moment as another figure calmly walked into the dim light of the Fourth Ring hallway. Goldenrod and gray all over, with a facemask covering all but his eyes. A decorative turban lay atop his head, still goldenrod. "Robots are what caused the inner tensions of the Second Rainbow."

"Duo, this is one of my favorite creations, Pharaoh Man. Pharaoh Man, this is Duo, Mega Man's friend."

Duo towered over Cossack's Robot Master, yet the robot showed no signs of being intimidated. Still, he did bow to the lumbering warrior.

"Doctor Cossack, I wished to inform you that Toad Man has finished his patrol of the water treatment facility, with all processes in the green." Cossack nodded, and then Pharaoh Man turned around and walked off. Cossack and his party didn't move for a bit, so Duo took a very serious mental note when Pharaoh Man turned around and looked at him, and him alone, for a very long moment before continuing to walk off.

"There is something that seems off about Pharaoh Man." Duo said hesitantly. Cossack nodded.

"I wondered if you might notice that. The reason is simple, Duo. He isn't as advanced as Mega Man is. For all purposes, Mega Man represents the highest form of artificial intelligence present in the world today."

_And yet all things change,_ Duo noted silently. Shuddering for a moment, he realized he had no clue why that particular sentence had leapt into his mind. Only the future could tell.

"Something Pharaoh Man neglected to mention in his answer was the specific robot that was brought into play during the breakup of the Second Rainbow." Mega Man added, eager to start the original conversation. "Know who that was?" Duo thought about it for a moment, then spoke up.

"Protoman?" Cossack's eyes glimmered.

"You were right, Mega Man. Your friend is of a sharp wit." Mega Man shrugged.

"Still Duo, asking if Kalinka was a robot…I hope Protoman manages to smooth out those wrinkles quickly."

"Why did he go with her?"

"He saved her life once." Cossack said sadly. "She harbors a great deal of positive feelings for him." He shook his head and walked on. "As do I…"

"You have to give Duo some leeway and a bucketload of understanding, Kalinka." Protoman said with a sigh. "He's different than any of us robots here on Earth."

"I don't think it should matter that he's from outer space!" Kalinka fumed, running a hand through her curls of blond hair and then straightening her T-shirt. "Thinking that I'm a robot…"

"Before he met you, the only other female he'd seen on Earth was Roll." Blues said easily. "She's what humans would call more than minimally attractive, and she's a robot…so obviously seeing you, it's logical that same thought would run through her mind. Face it, Kalinka, you're a knockout. There's no way he couldn't think that."

Despite herself, Kalinka blushed at Protoman's comment.

"Oh, hush." She finally mumbled, nervously tucking her hands into her jeans. "I'm not even sixteen yet." Blues sighed, keeping pace with the adolescent girl as they slowly walked down the hall.

"So how have you been doing, Kalinka?" Blues questioned, pushing past the subject of Duo for the moment. The organic offspring of Sergei Cossack shrugged lightly.

"Going to school, and that's about it. Papa's always too busy with some thing or another, and the robots have their own objectives." She spat the last part of the sentence out, and despite his usual collected calm, Protoman winced. His shield seemed to bounce a little harder against his back as they continued along.

"What is it you have against robots, Kalinka?"

"It was robots that kidnapped me and held me hostage so my father would be forced to work for Wily. It was robots that have taken my father away from me since then, given me so many times to wonder if he loves me anymore or not. It is robots that participate in Rebellion after Rebellion."

"And it was a robot that saved you from dying." Protoman reminded her gently. Kalinka's fire died somewhat at that.

"Yes, but…"

"But what, Kalinka??" Protoman interrupted bitterly. "But I'm different? But I'm beyond them?? But I'm more than a robot??" The girl fell silent.

"Kalinka, you have to understand. You can't hate robots, because robots can't hate YOU. We're bound by the Three Laws. We can't cause you harm. Only Wily's could, because their Three Laws were altered to his whims. Perhaps there are some days you think that life would be so much better if there weren't robots." Blues lowered his glasses and looked into her eyes. "Kalinka…Are you telling me that there are times you would think how much better it would be if I wasn't around?"

Kalinka bowed her head low and shook it.

"I don't 'hate' robots…There's just times I don't know whether to feel angry or distraught, Protoman. Sometimes I feel that papa cares more for those Robot Masters in the lower levels of the Citadel than he does for me."

"You feel like you're being replaced, in other words." Blues finished. The look on Kalinka's face made it all too clear Blues had hit the nail on the head. He shrugged and pushed his sunglasses back up. "For what it's worth, Kalinka, I know exactly how you feel. Do you think it was easy for me to come back and find out I'd been replaced by Mega Man? But I hadn't, Kalinka. Nobody could replace me. Not even Mega Man. I was unique, I was my own person. In the same way, you're your own person. Cossack may pay more attention to them at times, but you must never doubt that he loves you any less now than he did the very first day he held you in his arms, gently cradling you to sleep with a lullaby."

It was silent as they continued to walk along. Kalinka made the first move, a slow smile creeping to her face.

"You always know exactly what to say, Protoman. I'd be less than honest if I said I didn't love having you around."

"Aah, s'my job to worry about you." Blues said lightly. "So…you'll give Duo a little more understanding from now on?"

"For you, Protoman…Anything." Kalinka said shyly. The two stopped at a crossroads in the maze of corridors, and Kalinka swiveled about and kissed the red and gray armored robot on the cheek before he could stop her. Giggling, she ran off down the hall, while a befuddled Protoman rubbed at the area of synthskin she'd disturbed.

Finally, he harrumphed and cracked a smile. Yes, there was nobody like Kalinka. He'd saved her from her imprisonment years ago. And she was still thanking him for it. Checking his long yellow scarf, he took off along a different section of hallway towards Mega Man and their friend Duo, whistling a very old song as he went.

"Thank heaven…for little girls."

* * *

I met them all over the next three years. I discovered all of Earth's history, and realized how true Mega Man and the others were when they mentioned with saddening accuracy humanity's bloody past.

Conflicts before had erupted because of religious differences. Because of economical differences. Because of the color of their skin and their beliefs. Because of mistrust, because of minor squabbles that got out of hand, because of vendettas that went back generations before the starters. Humanity, it seemed, might resemble a barbaric race bent on its own destruction, if viewed from a mere historical standpoint. Time and time again, they had brought themselves to the brink of extinction. And the last time…the Wars of 2040, as they were known…had been their wake-up call.

So much of humanity seemed bent on causing nothing but pain and chaos…and then I realized how very lucky I was to have come here now, during a time when the only major crisis and force of darkness upon the planet was the wild haired madman known as Wily.

But I couldn't shrug them off that easily. There were parts of mankind worth keeping. Song…art…expression, and the belief that all human beings were equal. They had created gargantuan structures for a variety of reasons. They had gone to the moon, even…had thought about going to Mars for a while, but Earth's internal conflicts had gotten in the way. There was love. Faithfulness. Marriage. And the joys of a family. Earth had these, and it was for these reasons…those that stood in direct opposition to the darkness that I realized how very precious Earth was.

There was something about Earth that kept me drawn in. And slowly, it began to dawn on me. I was a being who had wandered aimlessly on a mission that seemingly would never end. And now, after countless Decacycles, I had found a place where I might settle down. With others like me. With robots.

There were some that still mistrusted robots…but it was a minor problem. Robots were bound by the Three Laws, were not a force to be feared. Not if they weren't affiliated with Wily. It was a fragile peace, but it was one that existed by Mega Man's sacrifices.

Yes, sacrifices. There were times in those three years my mentalics brought themselves online of their own accord, and it was then that I saw, time and time again, the struggles at work within him. But I could not speak for him. Only Mega Man could speak of that, and he never has.

And then, like a souffle left alone for far too long…like a balloon baked in the sun and stabbed with a needle…

This myriad world, this place of moderate sanctity left us all. And it demanded a heavy toll for its eviction.

* * *

How did it begin…It was the portion of the year 2085 that humans called 'August'…Was it the 7th??

By then, I had become familiar with all the major players in the world. By then, I knew Bass all too well. But I certainly didn't expect him to show up on our doorstep that afternoon out of the blue. With his dog Treble bounding beside him, the ebony armored warrior managed to get his message across without either side firing a shot.

Wily was dead…After everything that had happened, after the countless struggles he and Mega Man had been brought into…He was dead. What Bass told us next was what chilled us the most, and the damage done to both him and his dog emphasized it clearly enough.

The madman hadn't died of that flaw in his brain…the one caused all those years ago by the same warp transport experiment gone awry that had sent Protoman wandering for years. No, he hadn't died of natural causes.

One of his own creations had killed him. It wasn't like King, it was worse than King…

I could see his face all too clearly from Bass's tortured memories, thanks to yet another unexpected appearance of my mentalics.

Blood red armor everywhere…a jagged 'Z' across his shoulder joint, a long flowing braid of yellow behind him. And that stare…that stare on his face, combined with the maddening glint in his eye. It spoke of emptiness, yet betrayed something deeper within that screamed a sentient mind was present.

And all that I knew just from Bass's memories.

It was then that the bombshell grew larger. The Seventh Robot Rebellion, the one that had happened previous to my arrival on Earth for the first time, had a side effect that had never been made public. During Bass's escape from Light's lab, he stole several plans and schematics. One of them was for a fusion upgrade designed for Rush and Mega Man, but which was instead redesigned for Bass and Treble. But the far more dangerous one…

Had been for a new robot. A robot which would be called "Mega Man X".

Wily's Demon had been created by virtually replicating X's plans. But somewhere along the line, something had to have gone wrong. Because Wily's Demon went and offed his master.

We had to start somewhere. That's how we all arrived in a hidden underground room of Light's lab…built for the sole purpose of hiding X from the world as Light slowly brought him into existence.

* * *

I was different from all the others in that room then.

_But then, I'd always been different…foreign, alien. It didn't matter to them. They'd found something else to feel segregated against._

X represented the next step…perhaps the final step in the boundary between man and machine. As we looked down at his peaceful face, his jet black hair, and the overall appearance of Mega Man if he'd been made to look a few years older, they saw that.

Mentalics…Nazyr told me long ago they were a Watcher's blessing. But where I was, I saw only a curse. As I looked at X, my mentalics went active again. Only this time, I didn't see true images.

They watched with physical eyes. They saw an X of the present. And somehow, my vision tried to grant me a picture of X in the future. But it couldn't. I wasn't strong enough, wasn't capable of controlling it enough. It appeared as a haze, a low lying fog that blanketed everything, drowned out the specifics. And thus, I could see nothing.

For once, I was blind as they were. And that is perhaps why I decided to stay.

I knew the stakes at risk. The Demon was headed to Light's lab, to destroy Mega Man and Mega Man X both. Wily and every last Robot Master about him had fallen at the Demon's hands. A true killer had been unleashed upon the world, and it was coming here.

For once, I was no better off than them. For once, I realized that perhaps there were some missions that went beyond my directives. If this crisis was of no consequence, then I should have easily been able to pierce that hazy veil and see the results. But there were greater forces at work here, forces that would guide the path of all who lived on the blue and green bauble called Earth.

In effect, history was being made. And I was blind to it. It was because of this I would quest…

To be there when it happened. To help.

Perhaps…to even change what might come about.

* * *

"You've gotta be the screwiest character I've run across." Blues mumbled to Duo. They sat outside on the porch of Light's house, watching the sun set and turn the sky shades of pink. Blues had set Bass in Light's lab for repairs under the guidance of Roll, and now found himself with a chance to speak with the massive robot. Alone, after a great deal of time with the most puzzling enigma to ever grace their presence.

"One thing I have taken note of about most people is how they react to the battle yet to come." Duo said quietly, laying his large arm across his lap. Blues grunted.

"See, there's one of those things that makes you different." Duo looked up with a half smile and shrugged. Blues sighed and set his shield beside him. "What's your view on this X?"

"My own view will naturally contrast with any of yours. I have different experiences, a different viewpoint…"

"And different abilities." Blues said nonchalantly. He looked at Duo. "I know that Light's inspiration for X didn't come when you showed up and he had to recharge you. He'd already had that figured out and the plans made months ago. But what I've never been able to answer about you is…"

"What?" Duo pushed, sensing Blues' hesitation. The prototype eventually continued.

"Just how advanced you are." Blues chuckled softly. "Hell, Light never did take you all the way apart, never did see what made you tick. He has too much respect for robots to just pull a stunt like that. You might be mentally less advanced than me and Mega Man. You might be at the same level as us. Or, even…"

"My brain functioning might be at the same level as X's?" Duo answered. Blues paused and finally shrugged in acknowledgement.

"Yeah, even that." Duo sighed and turned to face the falling sun in the West.

"I couldn't tell you. All I do know is that I am more than a mindless drone. Aside from that, I could not tell you how advanced I am."

"Are you limited by directives of some sort?"

"Yes."

"What do the directives say?"

"I have only one: Seek out and destroy all traces of Evil Energy present in the Universe." Protoman blinked and stared at him.

"Is that it? There's nothing telling you not to harm others, to accept all orders, to preserve your life?"

"No." Duo said after a brief pause. "Whoever…whatever made me must have thought that that would be the only life I knew. Pursuing that mission."

"Are you telling me you're breaking your sole Directive?" Blues asked in amazement. Duo mulled over it, then nodded.

"In a sense…" He began unsteadily. "If I were to follow my Directive in the strictest sense, I would have left Earth and never returned after the 8th Robot Rebellion."

"So what allowed you to break free from that?"

"I made a decision to come back." Duo said flatly. "If this is what you mean by, 'going against your programming', then I suppose…that is just what I did. I sensed no Evil Energy anywhere I looked. I had nowhere left to go to. Returning to Earth…was the only sensible option."

"Just what do you hope to accomplish here?" Protoman asked quickly, peering at Duo through his ever-present visor.

The gargantuan proportioned alien robot heaved his shoulders only once.

"I suppose…I wish to help you."

"That's what's keeping you here now. What made you come back in the first place?" Protoman pushed. For once, Duo didn't have an exact answer.

"You know of my mentalics, correct?" He began quietly. Blues nodded. "It…was a very long time ago when I crossed paths with another like me. His name was Nazyr. Protoman, I wasn't the only one of my kind out there. They called themselves the Watchers, their only objective to continually stand guard against the presence of Evil Energy. A Watcher's mentalics is his flashlight, his map…what he uses to wander the galaxy, to find the danger, and to erase it."

"And your own 'mentalics' aren't up to snuff, is that what you're saying?" Blues harrumphed. Duo nodded sadly.

"Yes. Nazyr…died before he could complete my training. I was told by Nazyr, told by the others that it was then up to me to solve the crisis. For the Future."

"And all this is some sort of break from that?"

"It is a learning experience." Duo corrected. He looked at the smaller, yet deadly warrior with a smile. "There is much that can be learned from you and your planet."

Blues got up and shook his head.

"I think that the learning is going to end very soon. It's going to take everything we've got to put a stop to this thing tomorrow. If he was able to slug through more than fifty Robot Masters like tissue paper…" Unconsciously, Protoman shivered a bit in fear. "Hey, did you see where Mega Man went?"

"From the look on his face, it seemed as if he had some thinking to do." Duo replied. "We all have thinking to do." He added in a sotto voice.

Blues whistled a bit, then slung his shield back up over his shoulder and stood up.

"Well, I guess I'd better go look for the blue freak. No sense in any of us getting too worn out before tomorrow." Just as he finished his sentence, Protoman gasped out and dropped to one knee.

"Are you all right?" Duo asked in concern. Protoman trembled for a few more moments, then stood up and shook it off as if nothing had happened.

"It's nothing I haven't seen before." He said wearily. "I'll talk to you later." Before Duo could reply, Protoman vanished in a blip of light.

With nothing better to do, Duo brought his thrusters online and hovered up to the deck atop the house's lower roof. Seeing that there were no chairs large enough to accommodate him, he decided to hover there for a while, silently watching the stars, begging and pleading with his mentalics to behave for once…to show him what he so desperately needed to discover.

And yet the only soothing presence that came wasn't an answer.

It was Roll.

* * *

Duo opened his eyes and looked over to the terrace doorway from where he hovered, his massive beady optics blinking a few times before he identified the figure.

"Good evening, Roll."

"Hi, Duo." Roll replied mutedly, walking out and sitting on a foldout lawn chair. She focused her blue eyes on him and lifted an eyebrow. "Why're you hovering like that?"

Duo took a moment to peer behind him and the blue jets of repulsorthrust coming from his tiny, angular wings.

"I'm too large to sit down." He offered simply. "Your chairs can't accommodate my larger sized body."

"Hmm." Roll replied quietly. She shut her eyes for a moment, and then looked up to the twinkling stars above. "Duo…just where do you come from?"

Duo thought about it for a long moment, then pointed to the sky.

"Somewhere in that sea of stars." Came his answer. Roll frowned.

"What kind of answer is that?"

"An honest one." The alien robot admitted. "I don't remember anything about who created me, or where I came from. All I knew from the moment of my activation was that I was adrift in the void of space…and my sole mission in life was to seek out the destructive energy…"

"The kind that fell to Earth during the 8th Robot Rebellion, right?" Roll asked. Duo nodded.

"That would be correct, madam." Duo extended his massive left arm out and peered into his palm. "Perhaps that is why I postpone my mission…because never having known what a home is…I come to you and Mega Man and the rest of you for an example."

"Just another wandering spirit…" Roll mused sadly. "Mega Man X…What do you think of him?"

Duo's massive eyes opened and shut a few times before he spoke.

"He is Doctor Light's newest creation. In him I see a gentle peace…one that was never given to you."

"That's because he's more human." Roll spat out. "Now he's the only thing Light's concerned about…"

"How can you say that in good conscience??" Duo muttered, narrowing his eyes and staring into Roll's face. Roll fell silent as she locked gazes with him. "After all he told you, after all he explained about why he made you the way you are, and why you are his only daughter…"

"You're reading my mind." Roll said shakily. Duo nodded.

"It's not a talent I've learned to actively control, but it makes its presence known at times. Limited precognition…and mind reading." He sighed and turned about in the air. "Roll, a lot of things are being thrown into question tonight. I can feel the imbalance in the air, seeping into every pore of this house…But the one thing you cannot doubt, you must not doubt is your father's love for you and your older brothers. He could never replace you. X could never replace you. X may well be the future…but this is the present, Roll. And that remains solid."

"I see." Roll acquiesced quietly. "It's amazing, this talent you have…it's like you always know what to say, when to say it…"

"It's just something I live with." Duo shrugged again. "I do not know the full extent of my own intelligence, I must admit…I might be more advanced than even Mega Man X will be…then again, I might be less advanced than you."

"Kind of makes my own problems seem less important." The female robot said with a small smile. She stood up and moved over beside the hovering Duo, who finally descended onto the deck and shut his thrusters off.

"Duo, you can see things we can't."

"That is correct, essentially." He offered with a shrug. Roll looked up at him.

"What's going to happen? Tomorrow, when Wily's Demon comes for X…comes for us…What will happen?"

Duo shut his eyes then, as if engrossed in deep thought. He finally opened them and spoke.

"There will be a battle." Roll was looking tensed now.

"Is that all you can see?"

"That is all I wish to see." The alien robot said sadly. He shook his head and looked out to the stars. "Roll, there is something I want you to realize from our talk."

"What's that?" The alien robot shrugged his shoulders, gaze still locked onto the sky.

"All my life…I have done nothing but fight. For a righteous cause, yes, but…Until I met you and your family, I did not know that life could offer more. I had to come to grips with myself then, the same as what you must do now. I lived cycle to cycle, never knowing when I would die. The next battle could be in a mere blink of an eye, or megacycles away…I just never knew, Roll. Orphaned, with only my mission as a guide, I could have easily gone awry. But I found out something then. Do you know what that was?"

Light's daughter was silent, indicating she didn't. Duo continued.

"Life becomes precious to you then. When you don't know how long you'll be able to live it, every breath of air is a joy to be treasured. For all my precognition, my psychic abilities, my talents to peer into the future, the greatest lesson I learned was that the only time you ever needed to focus on was the present. To enjoy it, to live it…to be able to look back and say "I lived"…And so what if death comes? If you have lived your life, done all you can, you have nothing to worry about, no loose ends."

Duo tapped his right, more normally proportioned arm against his side.

"Now do you see why I choose not to bother myself with what will come tomorrow?"

"Yes." Roll replied mutedly. "But I don't think I could handle…losing my family." Roll looked up at him. "I'm not the warrior that my brothers are. I'm not as strong as them."

"They would fare no better if it was you who fell at the Demon's hands." Duo said. Roll nodded, then looked out to the stars, following Duo's own gaze.

"You don't bother yourself with our future. But what of X? What of X's future? He hasn't even lived…"

"X's future…" Duo mumbled, his eyes growing darker. "It's a haze…a dream I can't recall to active memory. Yes, I worry about his future."

"What do you know about it?" Roll asked. Duo turned his face down and smiled at her.

"Tonight…nothing. But tomorrow…" He shrugged, as if to say 'maybe'. "Right now, you should head back down to the lab. You left a promise with Bass you would be there when he woke up." Roll chuckled a bit.

"I guess I did…" She waved a final goodbye, then walked back down into the house.

Duo once more lifted himself up into the air, then folded his arms as best he could. Once again, his eyes grew dark as his vision went out of focus…

"For once, I can't see…" He whispered to the wind. "X, I don't know what the future will bring. There is a cloud, a barrier that blocks my sight…"

_A barrier that we will pass by tomorrow._

* * *

I never had to deal with uncertainty at the level that I did that night. My mentalics always granted me somewhat of a vision as to what would happen…How long, how deep and how helpful that vision was had always been beyond me, but it had always existed in some form or another.

It was like having an arm cut off from me. A talent I'd relied on since Nazyr showed me how to interpret it had been made useless. It made me question many things that night. All of us had doubts in our minds then. An unbelievable enemy was just beyond the horizon, and he would be coming. Roll and Mega Man and perhaps even Blues had their doubts about X. And Light…X was his idea in the first place. I was thankful that my mentalics would not allow me to see inside the pained workings of his mind. That sort of guilt…to ponder if you were creating a monster…

Robots didn't sleep. They had stasis. But that didn't stop Duo from dreaming. Lying on the roof of Light's house, his body immobile, his systems recharging, he found himself wandering through the ether of spaces' void…

And staring at two very haunting, familiar faces.

_"You've aged well, Duo." _Nazyr echoed, his face an ashen shade. Perhaps it was because he was dead. In any case, it was a vision during Duo's rest. Just now…it came when he needed one the most.

_"One might say he's well preserved." _Came the wizened voice of Marla, through cynical eyes. _"Of course, when you shirk off your duties like that, it's to be expected."_

Duo suddenly realized that in this vision, the two were not meant to be sources of comfort.

"What do you mean, shirk off my duties?!" Duo demanded. "You told me to stop the Evil Energy, for the future!! I did that! All the final remnants that landed on Earth and scattered about its solar system have been removed!"

_"And of the worlds beyond?"_ Nazyr asked. _"Duo, our mission as Watchers is to always wander the Universe, searching for Evil Energy and eliminating it."_

"That is what we were PROGRAMMED to do." Duo rasped back. "Nazyr, Marla, I never did find out who the makers were. And perhaps you never did. But I understand this. As far as I could see by the mission's end, there was NO Evil Energy anywhere…"

_"As far as you could see." _Marla said bitterly. _"So, what? You just assumed that there was none left?"_

"I KNOW that there is none left." Duo said confidently. "I fervently believe…that final battle we all took part in might well have been the closing act. The last struggle for domination. And we won."

_"None of us won." _Nazyr replied sadly. _"In the end, both sides were wiped out. It was only you and that final Carrier who were left."_

"He was destroyed, and so was his energy." Duo said. "And I believe…I believe that he was it. I can't sense Evil Energy anywhere in the Universe anymore, Nazyr. As far as I know…my mission is over."

The two ghosts hovered there, looking at each other for a long moment.

"So what now?" Duo motioned quickly. "It's over. The battle you spent your lives fighting in is done. The Evil Energy is gone from the Universe. Nazyr, Marla…It's done with."

_"Then so are we." _Marla sighed. She shook her head. _"All the Directive ever said was to eliminate that energy. To eliminate the Carriers that spread it. If that mission has been achieved…"_

"What, Marla?" Duo mumbled. "You think just because your initial objective is complete, that that's all there is to it? That your life is suddenly exempt from worth?"

_"For all purposes, it is." _Nazyr spoke up. _"Duo, our only role anywhere was to stop the spread of Evil Energy."_

"That's what it was." Duo answered. He looked at them now with a smiling face. "But when the mission's over with, you have to move on. I had to move on. And you know what?? I did."

_"You've been on Earth ever since then." _Marla added.

"There are people here…who are like us." Duo continued. "Warriors who fought long and hard against a crazed enemy force for the good of all. But I've learned from them…I've learned to live." Duo floated about the ghosts, more confident now. At long last, exorcising the final vestiges of his doubts about remaining on Earth, instead of returning to space and his endless quest.

"When their battle is done, they return home. They enjoy life. They continually remind themselves how precious it is, why they fight. I never saw that before."

_"And yet your spirit still speaks with doubt."_ Marla mouthed. _"What pains you??"_

"My mentalics…I never did develop them as well as I would have liked. And now, they have failed me."

_"You see haze where you want to see answers." _Nazyr surmised. Duo's mentor shook his head. _"I don't recall that ever happening."_

_"I do." _Marla picked up darkly. She faced Duo, her eyes narrowed with worry. _"Duo, no matter how trained a Watcher is with mentalics, there are certain things they cannot see…."_

"Why??"

_"You might describe it as a barrier, Duo. A barrier you cannot pierce…because what comes will happen, and until it does, you cannot see it. Some things are meant not to be forseen."_

"In other words…??"

_"If you see a haze…then what comes is crucial. It must happen…for it beckons the coming of a new age."_ Marla finished quietly. She looked at him one final time and nodded slowly. _"Our time grows short, Duo. Try your hardest in whatever follows beyond the haze of fate…And remember. The answers you sought long ago still remain in the stars. The makers are waiting…whenever you are ready."_

And then they were gone.

* * *

A stunned Duo awoke before the sun had even had its coffee, still on the roof of Light's house. The dream held fresh in his mind.

_If you see a haze…then what comes is crucial. It must happen…for it beckons the coming of a new age.._

And yet for all his pain, he still did not know what would come.

A struggle…but who would win?

Below him, Blues, Rush, Mega Man, Bass, Treble, and Doctor Light massed together for a final pep talk.

A chill ran through Duo.

"It begins now. Fate itself now lies at the helm…" He whispered. Below him, he heard Roll's quiet voice.

"Come back alive…"

And Duo shivered again.

* * *

_How much did I hate the forces that were at work? Enough to move mountains._

The first encounter with the Demon had taken heavy casualties. Of the five that left, only two returned. Mega Man and Treble.

Bass, Rush, and Protoman had fallen in battle, the first having blown himself to bits in a suicidal Buster overload, and the last two atomized beyond any ability of reconstruction. The loss hit us all hard. It was the worst on Roll and Light, though. Roll especially was damaged by the news. Was she angry enough then to change? She forced herself into our thinning ranks, demanding to take part in the battle against the Demon. Perhaps she'd just snapped. Or maybe it was a fire within her that had been waiting years to erupt, and at long last she became like her brothers. A warrior.

The dream of Marla and Nazyr had suggested that everything that came to pass was meant to, in some bizarre fashion…That somehow, it was already written in fate.

_That didn't make the loss any easier…it didn't make that dull ache in my chest any easier to live with._

Visions…DAMN THEM!! How long had I tried to live my life by them, to follow the code of the Watchers?? And in the end, where had it gotten me?? I had lost Nazyr. I had lost Marla. And now I was losing everyone on Earth I gave a damn about.

_One age must make way for another…_

Somehow, that thought rang to my mind then. Was that what this was? Fate's way of 'weeding out' the monolithic figures of the age of robots? To make room for what?

I still could not peer beyond that hazy veil even then. My mentalics ran dry, refusing me even a look into that far off cloud that last night had loomed far nearer than it had in the afternoon…

Like storm fronts. One pushed the other, each eager to place itself in the skies and force the other past the horizon.

_This isn't how it's supposed to happen…My visions are supposed to allow me to see things, to change them…I didn't want to lose Protoman. Even Bass should not have died today!! _

Destiny? Fate? Up until then, I thought them words as mere excuses offered by someone who failed to change.

But as we waited for the coming of the Demon over that ridge…

I wasn't so sure anymore.

* * *

We must have looked a sight if anyone had been around to see the Demon approaching, and us spread here and there. What we had was determination, rage, concentrated anger and deadly focus.

All of us were prepared to stop this creature dead in his tracks…but as he drew nearer, with his blood red armor and that sickening smile, that long flowing blond hair and dried blood spattered all over him, that focus began to wane.

Right then, my mentalics were more blind than ever, so warped I could not even see what the others were thinking. But was that the worst thing that could happen…?? With so many doubts of my own that weighed upon me, the added weight of all of theirs would only have hindered me further.

"He truly is a Demon…" I muttered in shock. The struggle with Bass and Protoman had effectively smashed his frontal chest armor into uselessness, giving us a weak point to aim for. And yet the Demon kept walking towards us, seemingly unaffected by the grievous wound. And through it all, I noted with bitter distaste that while the deadliest battle ever unfolded upon the ranks of Mega Man and his allies, the sky above remained cloudless and pure, as if in some twisted way it was a time of celebration, of uproarious cheer. "Bass's description was accurate indeed…"

"He's like a juggernaut." Mega Man growled, pulling up his Mega Buster and charging it to his maximum strength shot. "You can't hurt him with the small stuff…you just can't…"

"Roger that!" Auto called out, pulling back on the trigger of his high impact weapon and blasting off a missile that flew on, the recoil jarring the heavyset robot despite his steady footing. Mega Man turned about in surprise to watch the missile streak by and hurl itself towards the Demon. I did as well…Auto's reaction was both rash and dangerous…for it had broken that badly needed focus of ours only further.

"No, Auto!! We have to fight him TOGETHER!" Mega Man screamed in frustration. By then it was too late…

The shot had been dead on, and the Demon knew it. He halted dead in his tracks and lifted his arms up from their easy swinging gait, seemingly welcoming the missile to him like a mother beckons a child.

The explosion was tremendous, smashing out shockwaves that caused even MY footing to quaver for the smallest of moments. Flames and smoke that broiled the air about the Demon slowly died away, and we all waited…had Auto's shot worked?

_No…_

Curses, how invincible had Wily MADE THIS THING?! As if he was so unholy that even Hell itself could not invite him in, the Demon emerged from the maelstrom with his arms outstretched over his only wound, grinning with that same sickening stare.

"Oh, that's BOLTSHIFT!!" Auto muttered angrily, a modified malediction he used sparingly. "What kind of monster IS this thing?! That was high grade explosive!"

None of us offered him an answer. The Demon kept walking towards us, but as his sights fell onto Mega Man, it slowly faded away. Perhaps he recognized Mega Man, the only warrior of the original three that had survived his wrath. It had been Mega Man who had been forced to run from that conflict, so that Bass and Protoman might sacrifice themselves for a greater cause.

"Yes, we've met before…" Mega Man growled at the Demon, not caring if the madman could understand him or not. "BUT YOU WON'T GET PAST ME!!"

The Demon blinked for a moment…and then we took our chance. Duo, Mega Man, and myself unleashed our attacks in complete synch…Auto's concussion missile, Mega Man's Buster supershot, and my own blazing blue beam of energy meant to strike him down.

_But there was a mind in that cranium of the Demon. Enough of one that he registered all three attacks, and had more than enough time to react to them all as if milliseconds were an eternity…_

He swung his arm up and cleaved through Mega Man's Buster blast as a human might deflect a water balloon. To my own attack, that unbelievably powerful blast of Watcher energy, he merely swerved to the side, his boots belching the fires of Hephaestus. But more than that, he 'dashed', as it were until he was right in front of the Blue Bomber. With speed none of us could match as we were, the Demon hurled Mega Man clear off the ground and into Auto's approaching missile.

The explosion was just as loud as before…only this time, its fury was more effective. Mega Man's armor was no match for Auto's high grade explosive, and he fell stunned to the ground, his lightweight body suit bleeding green hydraulic fluid from all the rips and tears.

_No, Roll…Don't do it!!_

With fury engaged by her brother's sudden injuries, Light's only daughter rushed forth, Eddie and Beat in tow and flying ahead of her. The Demon disposed of the two small helpers with a pair of plasma blasts from his newly formed Buster.

_GET OUT OF THE WAY!!_ Not only was Roll thrusting herself directly into the path of the Demon's attention, and into his murderous hands, her position also prevented Auto and me from lining up our own attacks…and neither one of us could move fast enough to get clear of Roll's path to react to the Demon again. So that meant, as horrible as it sounded…

_She was doomed…_

"WHY DON'T YOU JUST DIE?!" We heard her shout. Her Buster came ablaze, and firing at near point blank range, not even the Demon could react fast enough to stop two plasma bolts from sinking into his wound. Damaged, he stumbled back and held a hand close over his wound, glaring at Roll with all his fury. In an act of defiance, he kicked Mega Man clear of his way and to me, where the damaged Blue Bomber rolled to a slow halt with a groan.

And then it was over…

In a mere blink of time, the Demon smashed forth and loomed over her, then slammed his entire fist through her torso.

"ROLLLLLLL!!" Mega Man screamed, finally coming back to his senses.

_It was too late…Damn us all, it was too late…_

The Demon raised her limp form up so he could stare into her eyes. The two locked gazes for the briefest of moments, and it seemed as though Roll had tried to whisper something…The Demon sneered and flung her up into the air. Once more, his Buster morphed to life.

And once more, that horrendous weapon of death exploded in plasma fire. It followed Roll up into the air, an angel ascending into heaven trailed by a bright bolt of light…

One fell into the other, and then both were gone in a flash.

Mega Man had been on his feet and rushing towards them when the Demon had thrown Roll up into the air and blown her into atoms.

_No…Mega Man, I'm so sorry…_

Even though I was behind him, could not see his face, instinctively I knew what shock, what pain was running across it then. For once…not that many years ago, I had been him. That look of sudden, ungrievable grief across his eyes had been mine.

The ground gave way to his feet as he skidded to a sudden halt. His arms hung loose at his sides, and he looked weak enough a mere gust of wind could blow him over.

_For once, I knew how they felt without using my mentalics. Because four years ago by Earth time, I had been Mega Man…and Roll…had been Nazyr._

It was as if something snapped in him then…just as I had snapped then. When grief failed you, when the time to mourn could not come…that raw emotion found other ways to vent itself.

Bloodshed.

"WIIIIIILYYYYYY!!" Mega Man screamed, clenching his fists tightly and swinging them up above his head.

The Demon paused and turned to Mega Man, grinning sickly once more.

"Oh, God…" I murmured.

_Mega Man, you can't fight him alone…I know how berserk you are right now, but you can't…None of us can!! Remember what you said earlier!! We have to work together!!_

I had lost Protoman. I had lost Nazyr. I had lost Marla. I had lost Roll and Rush and Eddie and Beat…

I would NOT lose Mega Man as well. It had to stop now.

_IT HAS TO STOP!!_

I pulled my blue aura up around me and exploded forth towards the conflict…But too little too late.

The Demon drew down his Buster until it was pointed at Mega Man. And Mega Man pointed his own Buster straight back at the Demon.

Auto remained on the roof of the house, the chaos having stunned him into inaction. But I had no time to do that.

_NO TIME…_

"NOOOOO!!" I screamed. The Demon and Mega Man's Buster shots were intense, blazing in every direction. I was thrown backwards by the force of the Demon's stray shots…even my own immense energy suffered from the intensity of the plasma bolts.

There was something more than mere electricity driving those two then. It wasn't Evil Energy, and it wasn't Watcher energy.

As I collapsed onto one knee, gasping as my power systems tried to catch up with the demand of my failing energy shield, I saw the birth of an energy beyond even my own limits.

It came from Mega Man then.

It was the power of a soul.

* * *

_The two collapsed then…enemies to the death, pushed to their limits. And in the end…neither side proved to be all that much stronger…_

How many had fallen…just so that this one Demon would be stopped?

Mega Man fell backwards, at last resigning himself to his fate. His dull eyes slowly began to shut…and the body of blue that fell to the ground was cold.

_He was dead…_

The Demon fell forwards, one ragged and torn hand held against the now gaping and sparking wound in his chest. What the others had done…had allowed Mega Man to finish it.

_I had failed them…In the end, I could do nothing…nothing at all to stop this atrocity…_

"No…" I groaned, running to Mega Man's side and shaking him. "Mega Man…please…answer me…"

The eyes stayed shut, the smile was now forever gone…

_He was dead…Mega Man…the one who showed me how to live, what life was…Dead…_

I trembled then. The grief returned. The pain returned. That dull ache that made you weak, yet contradicted itself, made your fury all the stronger…

With a roar, I drew to my feet. Blue Watcher energy seeped off of every pore, and in a blaze I stood beside the Demon.

He looked up at me then…his eyes dull and glazed, that spark of madness gone. Now all was left was the pain…and the quiet acceptance of defeat.

_Too much…it had cost too much…_

"DAMN YOU!!" I shouted…My left hand arced up, blazing with blue fire as it had done so many times before. He lay there, on his knees and on one hand, watching me.

And then, he too faded…but unlike Mega Man, into mere stasis.

_He lived…he lived when so many others had DIED…He had taken them all away, he had taken them in cold blood…_

In that moment, I was ready to destroy him. My fist swung down, flickering trails of light dancing behind it. It would all end…this madness in red would end now. By my hand, this Demon would perish. This chaos would cease. The fallen would be avenged…

_Fate…_

Something stopped me only inches away from slicing him in two…It returned to me then, fully, completely…

_My mentalics…_The haze was gone, my Watcher's foresight had returned…

And it was what I saw then…

* * *

_Explosions, a glowing sunset that faded into oblivion and left a starry night in its wake. A sleepless night for some…_

It was a summer night, somehow familiar, yet at the same time so foreign. It seemed to be near to a sort of factory area, with wire gating and lights…

Sitting atop a massive cliff, where suddenly a large chunk of it was missing. Missing, because it now floated in the sky, a massive monolith of supremacy. It was looming farther and farther away by the moment, quietly soaring upwards until nothing on the ground would be able to reach it.

Duo looked down at himself…everything else was clear, it was only himself that seemed hazy now…

_The skies parted, granting two beams of light entry to the danger that would approach…_

One red, and one blue. Out of them formed two figures.

_The DEMON…THE DEMON!! But…_

Gone was that glint of barely controlled malice and madness in his eyes. Replaced instead was the dull shimmer of intelligence, of rationality at work. And the figure that stared beside him…

_Small, somewhat more frail…yet with a hidden force in the curves of his face, like a pitbull just waiting to be released from his chain._

"Fine place for a massacre." The smaller one said calmly, looking up to the structure. "God…That's Sigma's Fortress, all right, but…"

"I get the picture." The Demon frowned, folding his arms.

_His voice…the same, yet calmer. More collected._ "Looks like Sigma gave it an upgrade somewhere along the line."

"We have to be careful, Zero." The small blue figure mouthed. Almost all of his body seemed covered in brilliant white armor with gold highlights, yet parts of it still revealed the blue nature underneath.

_The one in blue…familiar. And the Demon's name is…Zero??_

_**"WAIT!!" **_Duo called out, stretching his arm. Neither warrior offered a sign that they had seen him, much less heard him.

"No SHIT we gotta be careful, X." Zero muttered tersely. "We're the last two surviving Hunters. That isn't good odds to start with, but if we don't play our cards right, then we're stuck in the deep end with no liferaft."

"So what's the plan?" X muttered.

_X…It's X…MEGA MAN X…But then, that would mean…but how can he…and the Demon…partners…_

_**"How can this be…"**_

"X, we have to move fast. That thing's only getting farther and farther away, so here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna blow my way through everything that stands in my way, and then I'll find some way to get you on board. While I'm keeping the main defensive forces busy, it'll be up to you to sneak in somehow. If fate keeps frowning the way she has…" Zero shook his head.

"You'll make it through, Zero." X reassured the Demon, clasping a hand on Zero's shoulder. The gleam in his eyes spoke of confidence, of trust…of friendship.

"I was more worried about you." Zero replied with a quick grin. "Funny how it's come down to this…Former leader of the Maverick Hunters is now Maverick, and who gets to stop him?? A mistrusted under-troop now made team leader and a blue pacifist who's realized over the past two weeks he can shoot straight."

"We'll stop him, Zero." X mouthed firmly. "For the Future…we have to."

Zero nodded one final time, then blasted off, his boots still flaming the same belches of Hell Duo remembered facing…

_X…and the Dem…no, Zero…Wherever this was, they were partners. They were allies._

_They were friends._

_**"It…It can't be…" **_Duo mumbled, crashing to one knee in disbelief, his emotions swirling around in his head, slowly driving him closer and closer to exhaustion.

And then it struck him. Why suddenly, his mentalics had kicked in. Why when at the most critical moment, a vision had appeared to stop him from delivering the final blow and avenging blood for blood. It was what Marla had said to him, in that dream the night before…

_"If you see a haze…then what comes is crucial. It must happen…for it beckons the coming of a new age."_

The haze was gone now. The storm front had passed…

_A new age…_

An age where Mega Man X existed. Where the Demon existed…only then as Zero. Where the two were friends.

_A Watcher's visions are a probable guideline. They're not always accurate depictions of what will be…But rather, a vision meant to direct his actions. For the Future._

_**"No…" **_Duo croaked, covering his face with his hands.

_If this is the future…Then…_

Were the deaths of Mega Man, of Protoman and Bass and Roll and…

_Were they supposed to be??_

What was meant to happen? Why all the pain??

And then, as Duo came to his feet again and watched X fade into the distance…into the trials of another age, a darker age…he realized something.

One era had ended. The era of robots.

Duo's mentalic haze had vanished…because another was beginning. The age of X.

Often, Duo had asked…_What should I do now??_

For once, as he slowly faded away from that vision and back to reality, he knew.

* * *

When Duo blinked and came to again, he found that Auto and Light stood nearby.

The losses continued to weigh on Duo's mind.

_Protoman…Bass…Roll, Treble, Beat, Rush, Eddie…And even Mega Man…_

All so that the Demon could be stopped. So that X might live.

"Damn you…" Light whispered in tears, holding a shaking gun down on the motionless Demon's frame. Duo turned about, his face still full of disbelief.

"No." He mouthed quietly. "This one's future…is important to Mega Man X's."

Light could scarcely believe what Duo was saying.

"We can't let him live…he doesn't deserve to live!! HE KILLED MY FAMILY!!"

With tenderness that mirrored his newfound resolve, Duo gripped Light's magpistol and removed it from the traumatized robotologists' grip. Free of the weapon, Light succumbed to gravity and slumped to the ground.

"We cannot kill him." Duo said again, more confidently this time. "In the future, Doctor Light…" He shook his head. "No, it is not my place to tell you. But the Demon must live. HE MUST LIVE."

Light looked up at him, his brown eyes misty with grief.

"Why?" He choked out. "Why should Wily's bastard live when all my family has been murdered?" And Duo, now confident in his mentalics…in his decision…in the road ahead, no matter how craggy it was, had but one answer. The only answer.

"For The Future."

Duo reached down and held the Demon in his arms, as if cradling a child. The Demon was tall, only a quarter meter short of Duo's height. He shut his eyes for a moment, then nodded as the Demon's thoughts rang into him.

"Yes…time to take this one home." He opened his eyes and looked down at Light sadly. "I know your pain, Doctor Light. I know you may find it hard to believe…but I also have felt this tragic a loss before. I will return once I have sent the Demon back to where he came. Then…perhaps then I will have some answers for you."

Duo's blue aura enveloped both him and his unconscious passenger…in a flash, they were gone. Warped out.

Gone back to the place where it all began.

* * *

Wily's Final Fortress was as silent as a tomb. The Demon had left nothing but destruction in his wake, and every last defensive mechanism was offline.

In the grand chamber, Duo found what he was looking for. Sadly, he saw the bodies of all the fallen Robot Masters. Some were torn and shredded beyond recognition, others looked hauntingly alive…yet all were gone and dead.

And in a far off corner lay the crumpled, beaten and blood covered body of Wily. Even then, a day later, the stench of decay was growing strong.

"Heaven forgive you for what you have done." Duo said to the Demon. The crimson maniac gave no reply, too far gone and too badly damaged to even awaken.

Duo made his way over the gigantic graveyard to a blazing red capsule. It was here…

"Here is where it begins." Duo announced. His voice echoed about the chamber, empty, its lights slowly flickering into powersave mode. "The Demon was born here…And now I put him back to rest."

Gently, Duo placed the Demon back in the capsule from whence he had come. It reacted to his presence, shutting itself and flooding the interior with glowing restorative liquid. Shocked, Duo looked down to the monitor panel by a keypad.

**Extensive damage acquired. A deep stasis period of no less than thirty two years is required. (Chance of repair completion date inaccuracy: 73)**

The capsule glowed…then fell silent. Quietly, it continued its work. Long, arduous work.

The Demon had been stopped. But the cost had been high.

Gingerly, Duo turned back around and hovered some distance away from the capsule before speaking again, turning to face the clear pod's lid full of luminescent liquids.

"I hope my vision was right…Zero…"

And then there was nothing left to be done. Not here. In another blaze of blue, Duo left.

Now it was time who held control over this place. Not Wily.

* * *

Perhaps Light had been given a chance to calm down…then again, perhaps Auto had given his creator a sedative. Either way, Light lay in his house, crumpled in his easy chair, his face ashen, his stature hunched and his spirit crushed.

"The Demon sleeps." Duo said again, hoping Light would understand him this time. "His capsule claimed him…and he will sleep for no less than thirty two years. If not more."

"Thirty two years…" Light whispered. Auto stood beside him, gently stroking the Doctor's hair.

"It will be all right, Doctor Light."

"How can it be all right?!" Light moaned, shaking his head. "My family is DEAD…All killed…"

"Not all of your family." Duo interrupted. Light turned his beaten eyes to Duo, who looked back with radiant calm.

"You still have Mega Man X."

"Wily's Demon was based off of plans of X." Light quivered despondently. "What's to stop X from going berserk, the same as Wily's creation?"

"His legacy. His brothers and sister. His father." Duo answered simply. He looked to Light. "I wish I could have done more…In the end, I proved to be little help, if any…"

"You saved Mega Man once." Light said. He looked to the giant robot. "Not even Jesus resurrected a person twice." He choked out a short sob and shook his head. "It's still…too painful…"

Duo nodded, wishing he could console Light more. In the end, though…all he could give Light was enough incentive to continue on.

"You must live on, Doctor Light. For X's sake." Light looked to the laboratory beyond the doorway. "Your family fought…so that he might live. Don't dishonor their sacrifice now. Only you can help X now. Only you can show him the way."

"I'm tired, Duo." Light added sadly, trying to stop further tears from coming. "It's all ended like this…"

"It hasn't ended." Duo said firmly. He shook his head. "Nay…it's only begun." Duo got up and bowed to the Doctor. "This path is yours to travel now…I cannot interfere with it any longer."

"Where will you go?"

"Hopefully…where I came from." Duo replied. "There are so many unanswered questions of my own I still have yet to see to…"

"Can I do anything for you before you go?" Light asked, more out of misplaced and inappropriate courtesy than genuine concern. Duo thought long and hard…thought of his own doubts, of that vision…

"I would like a copy of X's plans." He finally answered. Light looked at him again, and his eyes seemed to die a little more in that moment.

But the Doctor nodded.

That was the last interaction Duo had with any of the people that surrounded Mega Man…and the age that they lived in.

* * *

_I must have sounded like I'd gone off the deep end then…Light, for all his genius, was still human. Still bound by emotions so more powerful than the ones I could ever hope to exclaim._

The plans for Mega Man X were safe inside one of Duo's compartments in his arm, stored on a memory chip small enough to fit. He had left Earth, just as he had come. In a blaze of blue, an enigma to the last. A player who spent more time on the sidelines, watching the game carry through than actually participate in it.

_In the end, perhaps that was how it was meant to be. This tragedy, this bloody end to the age of robots, to the era of Mega Man, would have carried itself out without me. By the time I arrived on Earth, X's schematics were already in Wily's hands. His visions, his dreams of building Zero…those were already set. I learned more from this world, from this time…than I learned anywhere else. Through Nazyr and through Marla, I learned how to fight. Through Mega Man and his family and friends…I learned how to live._

And now they were all gone. Even Light and Auto…Duo had wandered the heavens for two years, and when he'd finally decided to come back and see how the frail human representative and his world was faring, he discovered to his dismay that where Tokyo had stood…

Was now nothing but magma-covered wasteland.

_So that was it. It was finally over with…_Earth was a planet of action, of change. As though the ground itself acted to finalize the defiant passing of Mega Man's era, it had plowed over everything. Light's laboratory now lay under rubble.

_This is not my place. This is not my time._ So Duo had said a prayer once more for all who had fallen, and left Earth. It was November 2087 when Duo said his last goodbyes.

_But the age of X…the age of Zero…is still coming. My mentalics can see it clearly now. Even though Light is dead, even though his house, his laboratory, his last son is buried…there will come a day when he sees the light of day. And even Zero…The Demon, as he was known by the age of Mega Man, will awaken. I see it now. For once, my mentalics respond to me…not to the situation._

Duo hovered in the void of space, quietly staring down at the planet Jupiter, and at something else as well…

It was about half his size, a monument of metal set to orbit the planet Jupiter for its entire life. Powered by a small portion of his Watcher energy, it would sustain itself for another 5000 years of Earth's time. It would send no signals, offer no SOS. It would merely soar the skies above Jupiter, forever waiting. Sadly, Duo remembered how he'd set it up two years ago…and looked down at the engraved plate on its side, forever shimmering as brightly as it had then, never to be oxidized, to be rusted.

**For the Fallen Warriors, For The Ages and Eras That Fade From Memory**

**Marla, Nazyr, and the endless war between Watchers and Carriers**

**Ended 2081, Earth standard year A.D.**

**For the inhabitants of Earth who fought for peace because no others would…**

**Mega Man, Protoman, Bass, Roll, Rush, Treble, Auto, Doctor Light…**

**August 8****th****, 2085 and October 2087.**

**For The Future…**

**Mega Man X and Zero…The final surviving sons of Doctor Light and Doctor Wily.**

**Let there come an age where there is no conflict, no source of grief. Let the Wars of bloodshed at last be over.**

**-In Memoriam, Duo.**

**The last Watcher, August 17****th****, 2085.**

Perhaps some day, the inhabitants of Earth would finally reach to the stars, learn how all their endless conflicts brought nothing but grief. Perhaps some day, they would come to Jupiter. And find this monument. But until then, it would remain. Always waiting.

_Is this the hope of a silent guardian…or a fool whose age has left him behind??_

Quietly, Duo reached down to the compartment in his arm and opened it, pulling out the memory chip that held the very schematics of Mega Man X that had started it all.

_It began with this. The plans for a new generation._

And somehow, Duo knew it would not end with that either. He put the memory chip back, then plucked out an object the same size. Folded in several directions, crinkled and worn. But still intact.

It was a photograph. It had been taken years ago…before the battle with the Demon in 2085. There was Roll, and Mega Man, and Protoman, and Rush, and Beat and Eddie and Doctor Light…and then at the corner of the group, on what would be the right side from the perspective inside that photograph, was Duo himself. His arms folded, a small smile gracing the lines of his face. Bass was not in that photo, and neither was Treble. But they were as distinct a part of Duo's memories as anyone else.

It was all he had left to remember them by now. For they were all dead.

_Perhaps there is something more to be done._

Yes, Duo had told Doctor Light he trusted him, trusted the creator of Mega Man to do as well with Mega Man X.

_But…For all my confidence in my mentalic vision…what if I was wrong??_

What if X, like the Demon, would go berserk? What if the legacy of the Blue Bomber began and ended with the original?

_Perhaps there is something more to be done._

Duo nodded as he looked down at the photograph one last time, then folded it up and set it beside the memory chip.

He stared at the two in his arm compartment for the longest time, just sitting there. Relics. The age he saw…might come differently. Duo was stronger now, he carried the memory of a legacy left to only him and X. But doubts could still plague him.

Especially now that there was no one left. No one left to guide X into his life…so many years distant.

_Perhaps there is something more to be done._

Duo nodded as he shut his arm compartment and brought his Watcher energy forth. Slowly, he prepared himself for the long jump into oblivion, into the unknown. One way or another, he would do something. And why, he asked himself??

"For the Future."

* * *

So that was it. The age of the Watchers had ended. The age of the Carriers had ended as well.

The age of Mega Man was gone…and the era of Mega Man X had yet to begin.

And of I? I, a wanderer who had been lucky enough to see the most wondrous of ages on a planet so filled with both hope and doubt? I still had my own mission. No longer was it to destroy Evil Energy. That objective, for all purposes…was achieved.

**Directive Beta(Added 53:71): Ensure the coming age of Earth.**

**Directive Delta(Added 53:71.2): Seek out the makers.**

Was I like X?? In effect, I had programmed myself with new directives. Just as he would program himself with his own personality.

_But I didn't belong. Earth was theirs now. _

Still, there was always something else to be done. I had saved the Demon from destruction. For the Future. I had seen how Mega Man and all those with him had sacrificed their lives for X…For The Future.

_All this talk of the future…_

The Future is a mysterious thing. Amorphous, unclear, details can change as quickly as an eye blinks. For all that my Watcher mentalics could offer, they could never allow me to be 100 sure of anything. Because everything changed.

There would come a day…a day when at last I would have fulfilled every last task I could think of. Where I could finally push back the memories of Earth, and let it tend to its own affairs. There would come a day where Directive Beta was achieved.

And then at long last…

_Then what, Duo?? What would you do then? Seek out the makers, tend to your own affairs?_

Perhaps. The future isn't written yet. My actions, the actions taken by Mega Man and all those on Earth are just that. Quietly, slowly, we influence how things will be. And we can only hope for the best.

In the end, it almost doesn't matter what I do. The core of the next age comes in a blue package. With a young face, with open eyes. It is in X's hands now. Perhaps I can leave him something to aid him, perhaps not…

X, all I have left to me is memories and doubts. So, as you said in my last vision…

For The Future. It is left to you to lead the way.


	10. Last Blue Sunset

**_MEGA MAN X: WHISPERS IN TIME_**

By Erico

CHAPTER EIGHT: LAST BLUE SUNSET

How do all those songs go all the time?? Oh, yeah...

_My heart is human, my blood is boiling, my brain IBM..._

I remember my first thoughts...

_I._

_ I am._

_ I am Rock._

I was born in 2070. My designation was DL#01. Rock.

And somehow along the way...I ended up being called Mega Man.

_I'm not a hero, I'm not a savior, forget what you know..._

I'm sure you've heard the tale by now. Of how Rock vanished. How Mega Man took his place. How a man in blue saved the entire world from the hands of a madman.

_I'm just a man whose circumstances went beyond his control..._

Not just once. Time and time again, through countless Robot Rebellions, Wily and I crossed swords. Or to be more precise, we crossed guns.

It was a time of reconstruction. It was a world of fear. It was the age of robots.

That age lasted all of fifteen years. The events in them were told, retold, examined and stored away in historical annals. Such turbulent times were made by their very nature to be studied and re-examined time and time again.

But the historians weren't there. They didn't live in that nightmarish world caused by Wily's fantasies. I did.

They called me a hero.

_I have so much to say...but yet I cannot speak...come and do my bidding now, for I have grown too weak..._

In the end, I'm not a hero. Like that song written by Styx, a rock and roll band who lived in a different world, things just got out of hand. And I ended up being called to arms. Do you think I WANTED to be Mega Man then? I didn't. And there are times I still don't. You have to balance them out. Making a difference and bettering the world, at the cost of your own livelihood, your own dreams.

_My weary eyes have seen...all that life can give...come to me oh young one, for you I can forgive..._

Like Kansas, another rock band said, there comes a time when the 'hero' can't do anymore. And what then?

_I've stood where no man goes, and conquered demon foes..._

History books will tell you that there was a man named Wily. And there was a robot by the name of Mega Man. That time and time again, they met and fought. One so evil that his name brought scorn and rage, the other tirelessly stopping the nightmare, for he was and always would be the hero. That's the Disney-ized version, right there. And it's total garbage.

Yes, there was a Wily. There was a Mega Man. And they did fight. But there was no song and dance. There was no compact 90 minute storyline.

I am Mega Man. I was there. And I saw it all. So if you...YOU, who want to know what it was truly like...from my earliest days until my final gasping breath, are willing enough to see the truth...then I will show you.

The dream ends now. Here is the world.

* * *

I long ago had lost any sympathy for Wily. I long ago forgot how he'd gone insane, and that mental illness was the cause of his paranoid, delusional actions.

It was 2070 then when that happened. The first Robot Rebellion...the one that started it all. In some ways, the worst. Because Earth hadn't had time to prepare, I hadn't had time to prepare. There were two battles raging at the end of that conflict...the final battle between Wily and me, and the one in my mind. With Wily's virus program Ice Man had infected me with.

_"You--you're fighting me! You can't do that, Rock! You'll kill me! Remember the Prime Rule!" _

**_"Wily, you had your chance! I tried to help you, and you scorned me! Now you'll face true justice!!"_**

I remember how that fight ended. A complete draw.

Wily's Warmachine was put out of commission, and he was ousted from his last technological weapon. But I broke the Third Law then...as crazy as it sounded, it saved my life. Instead of destroying it.

The Laws of Robotics are there for a very important reason. To give all robots a set of guidelines to interact with humans successfully. By breaking the Third Law...Putting my own life in Jeopardy without obeying a human order or saving a human's life...My mind should have turned against itself, pushed me into total mind freeze. Death, in other words. But by breaking the Third Law that night, I fritzed the virus in my mind...forced it out of its ingrained spot in my core memory and into the virus hunting program Dr. Light and Roll had designed. So I lived.

That was the one main concern Light had with me. How I could disobey the Second and Third Laws...fully, without injury.

And that was how that first conflict ended, in the late summer of 2070. With a whimper and a hellish atomic fireball rising up from Wily's Skull Fortress. Wily was sent to prison for a time, and life went on.

But of course, nothing was ever that simple.

* * *

The probation committee ruled Wily had been acting under strain caused by his insanity.

_Fools...insanity had long since become a moot issue with that madman._

So they released him...under what were considered lax restrictions. And so it began again. The first chance he got, Wily constructed a warp generator for himself and fled. Of course, warp generators were dangerous to human life. Wily didn't care. He'd been damaged by a warp generator in that experiment gone wrong in 2069, and he'd been using them ever since. Not caring that every use messed up his mind even further.

Perhaps then those fools at Fyodor Prison realized the error they'd made in releasing Wily. Or maybe it had come when eight more berserk Robot Masters appeared around the globe, all there for one reason. Not to set up a set of conjunctive points to leave the world helpless, no. They were there for terror value, and to goad me into action again.

It worked. Once more, the world turned to me, their eyes pleading, praying. I remember how one news broadcast went.

**_"Wily's Second Robot Rebellion continues on now in its second day, and the reports are still coming in. This is hard news for a world still recovering from his first group of atrocities, made harder still by the fact he is no longer associated with any militant group. An attack made of his own accord, as it were...But the world remembers how the last Robot Rebellion ended. A man in blue, a robot by the name of Mega Man stepped forth and silenced Wily's terror, without causing an ounce of damage to his person. The world needs that hero again...The world needs Mega Man."_**

_They needed me. They needed me?!_

They hadn't needed me when I was a mere prototype in that press conference ages before the First Robot Rebellion...where I'd stood up, looking as human as any other teenaged boy. I had been new and intriguing then...but I had been feared.

And NOW, they needed me...

But nobody else could do it. No one but 'The Blue Bomber'...So I went.

I destroyed eight more Robot Masters. I found it a little easier this time than I had before. I'd never made friends with these eight. And then I found Wily's Skull Fortress again, this time tucked away in a corner of the Himalayas.

Stopping him that time was just as difficult as before. There was no virus in my mind, but Wily had found a suitable replacement...

Fear.

* * *

Wily's second Warmachine was no less deadly than it had been in the first Robot Rebellion. But luckily for Mega Man, it was a strategy he'd long since figured out. All it took was a sizeable amount of his Metal Blades to carve the monstrosity to shreds, and then it had crashed. The Blue Bomber had thought that for a moment, that was all it would take.

But instead, the ground had crumbled underneath his feet. Mega Man had found to his horror that instead of being able to see Wily crumple down before him in his bowing gesture, he was plummeting down a long, long shaft...which ended who knew where.

Only his fast acting reflexes allowed him to access his Air Shooter and slow his descent with several well timed blasts of superheated gas. He'd landed at the bottom of the long shaft, realizing to his dismay he'd fallen about three quarters of a kilometer. And apparently, the only way out was down a long corridor that sat in front of him with a mocking stare.

Avoiding droplets of acidic solution that dripped through cracks in the ceiling above, he slowly made his way through the passage, his only light the dim glow from his Buster kept at a low power setting. At the end, he found a strikingly familiar metallic shutter door. He'd seen them time and time again...and behind each one had been a foe.

This time had been no different...

Mega Man had stepped into total darkness, only to have Wily careen down from the ceiling above with a blood-curdling battlecry. His white labcoat had fluttered as if there was a wind blowing it, and before Rock's own eyes...

Wily had slowly shifted and changed into an alien.

_"It ends here, Mega Man!!" _Wily warbled, his voice altered by his transformation. A stunned Mega Man looked on in disbelief...for this time, the final fight between him and the madman had no wall of metal between them. It was just Wily...and Rock.

Gasping, Rock tumbled away from another shot that sang from the alien Wily's hand. It was plasma, no doubt...he'd gotten hit by Wily's first strike, and knew it was a powerful breed. It had taken at least a sixth of his health off.

"Wily, why?!" He shouted out, squinting his eyes to lessen the dazzling streaks of light that blurred between the alien and himself. The lights that flew by were like stars out of a Star Trek rerun...tiny pinpricks that left long flowing trails and effectively disoriented the still stumbling Blue Bomber.

_"You ruined my life, Rock!! You took away everything I held dear!! You stuck me into a prison, with narrow walls and horrible food! You haunt my every nightmare, and even now you try to kill me!!"_

"Wily, you're insane!!" Mega Man shouted over the roar of disorientation, raising his Buster up and checking his weapons gauges.

They were all running low. Time Stopper and Crash Bombs were at zero, Metal Blades were to 7...in fact, the only thing in any sort of working order from his trials was the Bubble Lead. But that was near useless...its primary use was underwater, where the 'bubble' part of the formula allowed it perfect buoyancy. In air, it was lead. Bubble Lead. It dropped and rolled...but if it hit something, it did cause substantial effects. Still, the unwieldy fashion of delivery had made it a tactic Mega Man hadn't used aside from against Heat Man, who ended up getting so tangled up in the concoction he roasted himself to death.

"Your own actions put you there, Wily!! It was YOU who took the six prototype Robot Masters and started that War, not me!"

_"LIAR!!"_

It was the inevitable conflict that the two could never reconcile. Because Rock spoke the truth, and Wily could never accept it. It never died, a force that appeared each and every time. It had been born in the summer of 2070. Now in 2071, it had come back, stronger than before.

Part of what frightened Rock so terribly was how Wily was attacking him. The mad scientist wasn't hidden behind another one of his machines...There was nothing Rock could shoot at that wouldn't endanger his life.

The room swirled in even more starlight, making it impossible for Rock to make any sense of depth perception. Was this a room...or had he truly stepped into a zone with no boundaries, an empty slat of space with just him and Wily? Everything was being thrown into question, and that was precisely the weapon Wily was using on Mega Man. Fear and doubt.

Another bolt of plasma came from the Wily alien, and it was all Rock could do to backflip away from it as it tore at...The floor?? Was there truly a floor or did the shot seem to vanish? But then, Rock had to be standing on something, didn't he?

He received a rude awakening as the back of his head slammed into something...hard.

Against all logic, defying everything that this zone of empty death seemed to offer, Rock slumped into a heap. But this time, as his eyes remained shut from the sudden jolt of pain, he realized something.

His back was pressed against a wall, and his legs were strewn across a floor. And with no blinding, hallucinogenic lights display to disorient his spatial senses...He was finally able to get his bearings. Enough so he knew that where they were was a room. They weren't out in the middle of nowhere. This was a chamber, meant to confuse him as...

"Your tricks won't work, Wily!!" Mega shouted angrily, climbing back up to his feet and finally opening his eyes. He had only enough time to register the shock of another plasma strike coming down and slamming into his chest, throwing him against the wall that wasn't.

_"No tricks, Rock...just your death!!" _Wily rasped angrily. Weakly, Mega Man drained another E-Tank, realizing he had just one left to his name. And still, the Wily alien continued to float about, firing off shot after shot and glaring at him with all the hatred the angry spirit could muster.

It had to end. IT HAD TO STOP.

**A robot must never harm, or through inaction allow harm to come to a human being.**

The First Law restrained Mega Man even now, as it always did, as it always would. Angrily, the Blue Bomber let his Buster sink back into itself, bringing forth his hand once more. Damn the First Law...

_But there's more than one way to skin a cat. _Mega Man blinked his eyes a few times and focused in on the Wily alien, then charged. With a roar, he leapt up into the air, preparing to wrap his powerful arms around the fool and drag him out of his flight.

But much to his surprise...His arms passed straight through the Wily alien, as if it were not real. Only where their midsections smashed together did Mega Man register pain, actual physical contact. Stunned, he fell to the pseudo-ground once more, shaking off his hazy senses as the Wily alien continued to hover around the room, laughing with undeniable cruelty.

_"You cannot win, Rock...You can never win!!" _

But something still wasn't right about it all...And for the moment, Rock stayed to avoiding the Wily alien's shots and thinking about it.

_Like he wasn't there, like he was a ghost, like..._

Suddenly, it became all too clear to Rock. Just what was going on. And the realization came with such rage sparks flew from his teeth.

"You bastard..." Mega Man whispered. He lifted his head and stared at the hovering creation, clenching his fists tightly. "You Godforsaken BASTARD!!"

_"At last you echo the words of your madness!!" _Wily snarled. Mega Man's entire body was taut now, ready to snap with the smallest motion.

"Trying to play on my fears...my doubts...My RESTRICTIONS..." Mega Man's left arm shimmered for a long moment, pulling back in itself as his Buster came to bear. His color remained constant, the same varied shades of blue as before. "GODDAMN YOU!!"

The Wily alien fired off another shot. Mega Man merely sidestepped it and lifted his own weapon.

"And now you come at me, trying to attack me with this...this HOLOGRAM!!" Mega Man screamed. His emotional circuits flared, his systems began to overheat, blaring out warnings that came so seldomly...

_It's the same damn kind of trick...that stupid shape-shifting robot of his from the first Skull Castle...the same damn kind of trick...A HOLOGRAM!! But now I'm not facing myself, I'm facing him...A warped form of him meant to play on my fears and the limitations of the Three Laws..._

**A robot must never harm, or through inaction, allow harm to come to a human being.**

"BUT YOU AREN'T HUMAN!!" Mega Man screamed, snapping his Buster high and firing away. Bullet after bullet of plasma tore away, striking towards the Wily alien.

And just as Rock had suspected, the image crackled and fizzled as the intense energy interfered with the field patterns.

"IT'S ALL A TRICK!! A RUSE!!" Mega Man fired again, this time able to make out a sort of cylindrical object at the image's core...The shots struck, yet caused no damage. Mega Man's teeth gnashed harder, angry at Wily's deception, angrier still that his main weapon caused no harm, and seemed only to increase the thing's power.

"ENOUGH!!" He screamed one final time. His blue armor shifted and flashed into shades of gray...With one final cry, the Blue Bomber leapt into the air towards the hologram. This time, not to tackle it. But to spray it with Bubble Lead.

Burst after burst of the eccentric weapon came out, each plowing straight through the holographic image and planting itself onto the cylindrical core. Mega Man didn't let up, keeping the stream of heavy bubbles descending. For all its power, the cylinder could not cope with the added weight of Mega Man's shots. As the image crackled and the cylinder sparked from its failing circuits, the starlight illusion also faded...

Leaving Mega Man in a brightly lit underground room with a gigantic holographic emitting hemisphere on the ceiling, still faintly trying to cause the starlight-- The Wily alien cylinder, which had emitted the alien holographic image in the first place, struggling to stay airborne as it self-destructed and collapsed onto the floor--And Wily himself...not an alien, but still ever so human, at the controls of a pod in a corner of the room, frantically jerking throttles and joysticks in every direction, still trying in his final hour of defeat to overcome Mega Man's attack.

And then it all failed. The cylinder crashed to the ground and exploded, the hemisphere shaped holographic emitter cracked and exploded, raining glass and electronics upon the Blue Bomber...and Wily's control pod shorted out and forced the mad scientist to flee from it as it exploded in a shower of sparks.

It grew silent then. Quietly, Mega Man let his Buster slip back away and walked to where the cylinder had landed. He could make out the plasma cannon's port on the bottom, the emitter on top, and on its sides...emitters for a narrow EM field designed to harness the power of plasma to recharge the cylinder's systems. Wily had had it all worked out. And he would have won.

Were it not that Mega Man had once again found a way around his limitations...found the impossible solution to Wily's madness and vaporized it.

"It's over, Wily." Rock spat out, marching over to the trembling madman and standing in front of him with clenched fists at his sides. "Your Second Robot Rebellion ends here."

A trembling Wily barely managed to get to his hands and knees...and once more beg for forgiveness.

* * *

And still...the world hoped he might be changed. Wily, esteemed member of the Second Rainbow, the scientific team that had caused the Reconstruction, that had preserved Earth after the madness of the Wars of 2040 that lasted a decade. He was still that Wily. They still clung to the theory it was his madness that drove him. Perhaps it was.

_But didn't they get it?! Where does the sympathy end?! When do you finally realize that he can't go back, that he WILL NOT STOP..._

Psychiatric evaluations, that's what they gave him. A year of it. And by the end of it, defying all odds, all logic, they released him. Declared him a sane man. Wily had bowed down and groveled before the world, begging for forgiveness for the acts he'd committed. They put him on medication for his psychosis, if I remember correctly. And the world rejoiced.

_"Perhaps,"_ they thought, _"It's finally over. The Robot Rebellions are done with, we have no need for Mega Man." _

And how I so desperately hoped that had been the case. Still acting penitent, Wily had gone to my father. Doctor Light. He patched up things, promised to be the good little worker and help Dr. Light with the grandest project ever.

It would be called Gamma. A massive robot designed for one reason:

Replace me. In other words, a peace-keeping robot. It was a project heralded by the entire world as a sign of peace to last for ages.

But...they ran into problems. To finish construction of the ten story tall behemoth, they needed eight very special breeds of a new kind of crystal that had only recently been discovered. It was known as Energen, or something of that nature. There was even a mining colony up on the moon that dug out Energen. Eight colonies in all, each providing Energen of a slightly different type. But to make Gamma, make the power crystal that would serve as the focusing point for his Fusion generator's power distribution, would take one from each. And the problem was this.

Each and every one of those eight colonies, seven on Earth and one on the moon, was in such dangerous environments that humans couldn't work there. So they put robots in charge. More precisely, Robot Masters.

And just as before, the Robot Masters had gone berserk. Only this time, Wily swore it wasn't him that was causing it.

_As if I would ever believe him..._But Light did. Simple-minded, all too trusting father of mine...

So that meant something else caused it. Because all eight going bonkers at the exact same time...was too much of a coincidence. So they called me out. The world called me out. To once again don that blue armor, to stop the Third Robot Rebellion in 2072 and set things right. But did I ever have a choice??

_Mega Man, being blessed with a strong sense of justice, chose to stop Wily's evil schemes..._

Textbooks would say that. But you want the truth? I did it because no one else would. And every time I had to do it again, it became more and more of a burden.

Along that path I walked, I had to face a robot about my size in gray and red armor, with almost the same capabilities as me--Break Man. Only by using a new technique I'd picked up, the slide, did I manage to defeat him time and time again. Four times I faced him, and then one final time...

Dr. Light built me a pet...a robotic dog by the name of Rush. Not always as bright as you'd hope, but he came in handy. He possessed skills that before I had to rely on the Magnet Beam or Dr. Light's Item series to obtain.

And I met Doc Robot. That was all it took...that first glance into his disfigured face to realize we'd met before. Because back in that very first Skull Castle...it was HE who had transformed himself to look like me. His holomorphic abilities had long since gone out on the blink, and the best he could do now was imitate the abilities of the Robot Masters I had faced in the Second Robot Rebellion.

_He came to me, thirsting for revenge. For my death. But he would not have it._

By the end of my missions, Doc Robot was finally gone. He'd suffered for years, but no more.

And then, guess what? I'd given the good doctors the Energen crystals before I'd left to tend to the maniacal Doc Robot. When I returned, I discovered I was too late.

Wily had faked the psychiatric tests...for all the insanity in his mind, he still had that genius. Enough of him was left he had been able to lead us in that ruse all along.

He'd knocked Dr. Light out cold...shocked Roll into stasis...and fled the laboratory, taking Gamma with him.

_It had been Wily all along. I think that was when the world finally realized...He was beyond help now. He was just a monster. _

His newest Skull Castle was a grand achievement. Each and every Skull Castle was completely different, and I still looked back on his very first as the most monstrous, the most difficult to fight my way through...but he still packed in his surprises.

The return of the Rock Monster--the Yellow Devil. A room where I had to face three holographic images of me, and only one would take damage. And then when I got to Wily himself, a massive creation he hailed as the Pinbot.

But it wasn't Wily that was controlling the pinbot. It was a robot Wily...whose head came flying off on a spring, like some laughable jack in the box...

_"What's the matter, Rock? I thought the entire world had accepted the fact my head wasn't screwed on right!!" _The speakers in that chamber laughed. Gritting my teeth, I blew the Wily robot into scrap and climbed down even further.

It was there, in the lowest Sub-Sub basement I could get to, that I finally met the REAL Wily. At the controls of none other than the massive Gamma robot.

_There was almost nothing I could do to stop it. If I stayed at the lower platform, it would swing at me with fists that could end my life in a single hit. If I managed to clamber up to the metallic scaffolding above the range of its hands, it would fire plasma at me..._

Some people might say desperation drives ingenuity. Perhaps. Or in my case, it might have been rage.

_Yes, rage...the world's mighty 'Blue Bomber', their savior from the madman known as Wily fought. And only when that rage met its peak did his true powers emerge..._

Almost as if Wily built his Machines to be completely invulnerable to everything but the most useless weapon in my arsenal, he deflected every shot. Hard Punch, Shadow Blade, Spark Shock, and even normal bullets...nothing worked.

Until I decided, if it was going to end, I might as well try the craziest stunt ever.

Hailing Rush, I leapt off of his back springboard and into the air above the Gamma robot. My armor shifted and whirred, going to a shade of gray and dull, dull yellow. The Top Spin.

Everything gave way then. As my entire body twisted and gyrated from the rotational speed the attack brought, I slammed clean through the Gamma robot's head. Missing Wily, demolishing everything in my path. Gamma was destroyed, and as he fell apart, so did Wily's Skull Castle.

But was that the end of it?? I had seen Wily crushed underneath a gigantic mass of solid rock and metal, only fractions of a second before I suffered the same fate. And I lived. Coming to in my house...Light's laboratory, I was surprised to see Break Man standing next to Light, his face mask pulled away to reveal a somewhat quirky smile, whistling a familiar four tone, five note song.

_So...it turned out that all along, the mysterious Break Man had been Protoman...my older brother, the prototype for me and Roll._

Protoman, or Blues, had been created in 2067, and had known both Light and Wily before I was ever born. Light had thought him lost in that warp transport laboratory accident in 2069, but he wasn't...He'd merely been spun off, almost entirely fritzed. But somehow he'd found his way to Wily. And remembering him as Light's robotics partner, and not the psychopathic madman, he'd been convinced that there was a berserk blue robot running about everywhere, messing up Wily's plans.

Of course Protoman had fallen for it. And only so much later did he realize where the true boundaries of the conflict lay.

_"Rock, forget about it. Wily was crushed underneath that rubble, the same as you. I could save your life...but it was too late for him." _Blues reassured me.

So by the end of the Third Robot Rebellion, I'd gained a brother and a pet. Destroyed yet another robot menace. Made the world safe for democracy, some slanted textbooks would say later.

And still, I couldn't break that nagging feeling.

That somehow, Wily hadn't given up the ghost.

And how right I was.

* * *

Peace, it seemed, had a habit of appearing fleetingly, like cherry blossoms. Or sakura leaves. Pick a form of plant life with a limited lifespan, I don't care...the analogy works the same.

Back in the initial explosion of the robotics movement, there had been a few main players. LightTech Industries, started by Light and Wily, responsible for not only my life, but the very concept of Robot Masters, the American based U.S. Robots(Named such because of Isaac Asimov's work in the science fiction of robots back in the 20th Century), and a little known company by the name of Cyrillic Enterprises. Of course, there were other smaller ones, but those were the big three. The head, the genius behind Cyrillic Enterprises had been a lesser known, but still respected robotics engineer by the name of Sergei Cossack. I remembered reading how disgusted he'd been at the militarization his company had taken, and how he resigned because of it. Cyrillic Enterprises soon died afterwards, no longer having its main thinker leading the helm.

And that's what came as such a surprise, when in 2075, Cossack made an announcement that stunned the world.

Apparently, he had grown angry that his own designs for Robot Masters had been denied production by all the robotics firms...this was true to some extent, of course. Cossack had quit the industry, been made sort of a pariah. But he'd gotten wealthy in those early years, more than enough to sustain him and his daughter. And now all of a sudden, he'd unleashed another wave of robotic horrors across the land...with eight of his own Robot Masters leading the way.

And he was challenging me...

_Challenging Mega Man to step forth and see if the famous Blue Bomber had the balls to face the seemingly impossible odds._

I remember talking to Blues before I went off to begin the Fourth Robot Rebellion. And the usually half smiling, if not whistling older brother of mine seemed startlingly off kilter.

_"Rock, I understand that there's no other way around this crisis than to stop this Robot Rebellion dead in its tracks. But..."_

_ **"But what??"**_

_"...Something still seems off." _He shook his head, stood up and warped out. And that was the last I saw of my older brother for a while.

The next conflict was both harder and easier at the same time. Cossack's Robot Masters were more well ingrained in the trenches than Wily's had been...yet at the same time, Dr. Light had given me an upgrade to my main weapon. Changed my plasma Buster into the Mega Buster, given it the ability to charge up and release larger, more powerful shots. Not to mention he redesigned the original robot in the Fliptop series, Eddie, to warp in and out of certain battlezones to carry resupply items like E-Tanks.

And that was that. Eight more Robot Masters. Eight more areas to claw my way through, only to face almost certain destruction. But I still triumphed...and in the end, through a communication that Drill Man had been trying to route back to the home base, Dr. Light and I tracked down where Cossack himself was holed up.

In the middle of nowhere in Siberia, the Russian robotics engineer had added onto an old Russian Royal family castle. Only now, it was a Citadel. Cossack's Citadel.

And strangely enough, I remember that fight with Cossack as clearly as any ever fought with Wily himself.

* * *

Cossack's other Citadel guardians had been heads and tails more difficult than the fight with him was. The Melee Moth had nearly sent Rock plummeting to his doom, and The Cage, as he'd affectionately named it, had effectively boxed him inside a tomb with a focusing crystal that was as much the thing's weakness as its single projectile weapon. Not to mention the Skeeters, crawling about the spike laden room with ease and firing off blasts of plasma at their will...

All of those had presented unique challenges that might had won the Blue Bomber over. But each time, he'd dug into something deeper than mere advanced response time and came out on top.

He didn't even have to try in this final fight.

It was almost as if Doctor Cossack wasn't even trying to fight back. Occasionally, he would lower down his pod and try to pinch at Mega Man with the pod's only weapon, a single pincer...but as he remained hidden behind that thick shield of plasteel, his main focus seemed only to offer a halfhearted effort and lose.

"What's with you, Cossack?!" Mega Man shouted angrily. "I thought you were mad at the world, mad at me!! You think you could try a little harder for vengeance!" His Buster sang with the power of another synthesized mass of scrap shrapnel that smashed into the already tender underside of Cossack's Pincer Drop.

"I see you have learned how to focus the Dust Crusher, Mega Man." Cossack observed bitterly, the distaste on his face evident through the plasteel covering of his final defense. "Tell me, did you enjoy severing Dust Man apart before he blew into bits? Did you enjoy that act of aggression?!"

"I NEVER enjoy this, Cossack!" Mega Man spat back angrily, sliding underneath Cossack's retaliatory swipe. "Do you think I was activated for the first time with thoughts of rampaging, destructive madness racing through my mind?! NO!! But as far as the world's concerned, I'm the only one around who can stop this crap from happening!!"

The Blue Bomber tried to avoid Cossack's machine again, but this time was drawn tightly into its Pincer grasp.

"You don't understand." Cossack croaked, manipulating his craft to squeeze Rock tighter and tighter, until the motion bit into his body suit and threatened to slice him in half. "I'm not doing this for pleasure either..."

"So then why are you doing this?!" Mega Man barked, managing to switch over to his Ring Boomerang and sever the Pincer's hydraulics, freeing him from its vicegrip.

"I must..." Cossack replied shallowly.

"Bull..." Mega Man whispered. He lowered his head for a brief moment, then shook it and clenched his free hand. "That's total Bolshevik. You always have a choice to commit the actions you're performing...ALWAYS!!" His face swung up, contorted in rage. "When Wily died, it was finally over. I was finally FREE of the curse he'd given me...of being this...HERO..." His yellow coloring faded away back into Gray as he readied another burst of Dust Crusher. "But no, you had to go and take that away from me, you Goddamned maniac..."

He lifted his Buster and prepared to fire again. Cossack's warcraft was already badly damaged...severing the Pincer Arm had sent it into freeze.

"Mega Man, no!!" Cossack cried out in alarm. "My craft...if you strike me now, I will die!!"

That was the only thing that kept Rock from ending it then and there. Stunned by the announcement, he stumbled forward and ruined his aim. Still, impulse fired off the shot, denting the concrete wall beyond the dim light with the Dust Crusher's shrapnel.

"Then it seems we're at a stalemate, Cossack." Mega Man spoke up, when at last he could again. His eyes burned with all the fury of his lost innocence, the abandoned years, all the nightmares and horrors that had come with his triumphant role. "If I fire at you again, you die. At the same token, you can do nothing more to attack me."

"Then I suppose we'll end up staring each other down." Cossack replied nervously.

And that was when a familiar four tone, five note melody rang through the wide and expansive Fourth Ring of Cossack's Citadel.

A familiar figure jumped down from a rafter above the fighters, clad in gray and red protective armor with a shield swung over his back. However, he was currently having a devil of a time keeping his bright yellow scarf in its traditional pose, what with the little girl pulling tightly on it.

"Cossack, stand down." Blues ordered wearily, setting the young girl to the ground and turning her about for the fighters to see. "Your kid's no longer under his control." Mega Man looked at Blues for a long moment, only then noticing the scars from heated battle lining his torso.

"My God, what happened?!"

"Simple. Cossack here was right, bro. He had no choice but to call you in. He was under orders to, and being blackmailed to do so. By means of this pretty little package here...his daughter, Kalinka."

"Don't hurt my father!!" Kalinka wailed, suddenly noticing just what Mega Man and her only parent had been doing. Mega Man was too stunned to remind her that he couldn't.

Somehow, Cossack pulled himself free of the wartorn craft and got to the ground, running to Kalinka and hugging her tightly, as if he was afraid a foul gust of wind might blow her over.

Which was all too likely...her face was dull and pale, her eyes listless and worn, her body thin and malnourished, she looked on death's door.

"I can't believe the conditions she was being kept in..." Blues growled, clenching his fist. "It's inhuman...not even dogs deserved the torture she got."

"But then...that...but who..." Mega Man uttered, still trying to get his bearings at the shocking realization that this Doctor Cossack had been manipulated all along.

Cossack finally lifted his face from his daughter's shoulder and looked at Mega Man with a glance of hard focus.

"Who did this?? The madman you failed to destroy in the last Robot Rebellion."

It was only then that a beam of warped matter crashed down in front of the group and re-coalesced into a figure.

A figure with wild white hair off the sides of his head, a great gray mustache, and a lab coat covering over a pair of brown slacks and black shoes. Wild eyes burned with hatred and fear all at the same time, smouldering like the embers of Hell itself.

_Wily._

* * *

_He hadn't died. Blues didn't think he had survived the explosion of his last base, but..._

Wily was alive. Somehow, he'd blasted his way to freedom, and with the world thinking he was dead, he was able to move about unhindered.

Cossack was nothing but a ruse, a scapegoat. A diversion meant to keep me busy, and also a diversion that carried the hopes that I might finally be pushed out of the picture. It was a plan of sheer genius hidden behind a veil of malevolence. Cossack would have never gone through with the plan...that was why Kalinka had been kidnapped, held in captivity in a portion of Wily's Fourth Skull Castle under the duress of Robot Masters.

_THAT was what Blues had been up to this entire time..._

He'd just gone wandering, and that's when he'd stumbled across Wily's base. Perhaps he knew, instinctively KNEW that there was a force behind Cossack.

Wily had blasted away as soon as he realized he'd lost control of the situation, leaving Dr. Cossack, Kalinka, and me and Blues alone to our thoughts. That was when Blues was able to finally tell me just what had happened.

Wily had greeted Blues with open arms...it seemed rational enough, considering that the last time they'd seen each other, my brother was still under the belief that Wily was trustworthy. Blues had likewise responded the same way...The shock hadn't been hard to fake, and behind those glasses of his, it was easy enough to mask the smaller signs of deception.

As soon as he'd gotten the chance, though, Blues broke away from Wily's watchful eye, made his way through the Castle and found his way to Kalinka.

That was why Protoman looked so torn up...he'd had to take on three Robot Master copies of Snake Man, Gemini Man, and Needle Man. Only by jumping around enough and causing their various attacks to strike at one another did he make it through the struggle by the skin of his teeth. And then he'd taken Kalinka and blasted a wall out, running for all his might.

_That's why it had taken so long...Why he showed up just in the nick of time._

If it had just been him, Protoman could have warped his way free of the trap without difficulty. But having to tend to the welfare of a human...a weak and sickly human, no less...Effectively nulled any rational chance of that method of escape. Warping would have scrambled her mind, harmed her...Blues would have disobeyed the First Law in doing so.

So it had been the long and winding road for him. Making his way through the wilderness, running endlessly with Kalinka huddled close to him...

I can't imagine the trials those two had to face on the road back from Wily's Skull Castle to Cossack's Citadel. And Blues was tightlipped enough about the matter he stopped after mentioning it took them a week to traverse the wilderness with countless hordes chasing after them.

But now it would be all right. Kalinka was back in Cossack's hands, and would slowly be nursed back to health. Weary beyond any level he'd ever been at before, Blues finally warped back to our house for a very long stasis nap.

And then it was up to me. I found it easier to take on Wily's madness after every Robot Rebellion. Almost as if the feelings of rage and anger the conflicts brought forth in me grew stronger each time, more efficient, more deadly.

And this time...the Fourth Time...was easier than most.

He'd blackmailed a decent and honest person in his quest to get to me. He'd brought harm to another human being on purpose. Not merely sending robot hordes to end their lives...but maintaining an innocent soul in a state of utter, depraved captivity.

Yes, this time was easier than most.

_This time, it was personal._

* * *

"YOU SHOULD HAVE DIED, WILY!!" Rock screamed into the darkness. A bitter, heartless laugh answered back only moments before a brief flash of light revealed where Wily's final Warmachine lay hidden.

With a scream, Mega Man fired off the supercharged Pharaoh Shot above his head, casting it down with both hands. It struck Wily's craft, adding another hit. But at the same time, Wily managed to peg the Blue Bomber with the full quad of his own before vanishing once more.

_"Rock, there are times you even surprise me..." _Wily growled. _"Surely you would have realized by now that I will NEVER rest until you are DESTROYED!!"_

"That's not going to happen anytime soon, you monster." Rock called back angrily. "I don't know how you survived the annihilation of your last Skull Castle, but you shouldn't have come back...Damn you, you shouldn't have come back!!"

_"Oh, so now you're angry with me?!" _Wily roared. _"About time you feel the same way, you pathetic robot! All I have left now is my rage...THAT'S ALL YOU LEFT ME WITH!!"_

"That's all you left yourself with, you stupid bastard!" Mega Man shouted.

Quickly, he turned about in time to slide underneath two shots. A third hit him in the shoulder, and he winced from the blow.

_"It will never end, Rock!!" _Wily cackled insanely. Mega Man picked himself back up to his feet and drained another E-Tank, restoring the health lost from his arch-nemesis's blows. _"No matter how many times you stop me, no matter how many Robot Rebellions you quash, I will keep coming back...I will keep fighting you, keep forcing more and more pain on the world until they realize that you are the true problem!!" _

"YOU'RE INSANE, WILY!!" Rock exclaimed, hurling off another supercharged Pharaoh Shot into the darkness. Speakers had been set up everywhere, preventing Rock from finding Wily's vehicle by sound pinpointing...or any other method, in the completely dark room. "That will never happen!!"

_"Then I will never STOP!!" _Wily rasped. _"Until you are dead, until your name has been wiped clean from this miserable woebegotten planet and the feeble minds of its bastard hordes, I WILL NEVER STOP!! Rebellion after Rebellion will be instilled, Rock. Innocents will suffer. Until at long last, I finally triumph! Cossack was a puppet, Kalinka was his strings...There will be others, Rock. I WILL NEVER STOP!!"_

And that's what caused Mega Man to snap. Something deeper than his programming, deeper than his emotional circuitry could cope with...the sheer force that Wily's statement brought forth came like a tidal wave, quashing over everything, overpowering everything else.

_HE HAD TO BE STOPPED._

"**_NOOO!!"_** Mega Man screamed, a shrill cry from his very core that threatened to blow out his vocal processor. Another globe of sunlike plasmic energy clustered above his head, larger than any before...

Rock didn't even bother waiting for Wily to appear. He just fired. He charged another shot, and fired again in a different direction.

The fourth charged blast of his Pharaoh Shot was the one that brought Wily forth from the shadows at long last. The mad scientist cried out as the energy finally overloaded his controls, caused the lights in the room to suddenly begin to flicker on and off like a strobe light.

Rock fired again and again, burning blast after blast of Pharaoh Shot energy into the cloak-capable vehicle. Wily barely managed to force the hatch open manually and jump out screaming before his Warcraft at last could take no more, and exploded.

Strangely, Wily remained unharmed, pushed away by the explosion with no shrapnel striking him. He rolled to the ground in a heap, revealing to Mega Man that the room he'd been fighting in came with two distinct floor levels. Like before, Wily had tried to cause spatial confusion to his foe. And just like every time before, he had failed.

It was over.

But after bowing a few times, a wearied and emotionally exhausted Mega Man was stunned to see Wily stand up and flash a feral grin at him.

"This time, Mega Man...but the next time we meet..."

He tottered towards the wall and activated a secret exit, slipping through before Rock could even utter a cry of surprise.

And then the klaxons that signaled the base had initiated self-destruct activated, and the entire structure of madness began to shake and quiver in its death knell.

Rock had no words then, just a lump that rose up in his metallic throat and made him clench his fists up into balls. But common sense took over, and he warped himself free of the Skull Castle.

Wily's Fourth Skull Castle was located farther East and North than even Cossack's secluded base, in Siberian wilderness so deep that nobody would have ever thought to look there.

Nobody but Blues, who had spent so many of his early years wandering that not looking there was next to forgetting to pack an extra pair of socks.

Wildlife had since learned to avoid coming near the Castle, so there was an eerie calm that surrounded it.

That calm was shattered only moments after Mega Man reappeared on a snowy slope overlooking the monstrous place, when a grim fireball caused the whole fortress to ignite and vanish in nuclear fire. It was a limited explosion, one designed purely to do away with the Castle and whatever lay inside. The land about would remain unspoiled, fallout would not occur. Only the memory, and the charred effects of the heatwave and concussion blast would remain.

Mega Man's blue eyes reflected the light from the structure's collapse as for a moment, it was brighter than the sun itself. He watched a familiar billowing smoke cloud rise above the ashes, appearing in the shape of a macabre death head. As if all of Wily's bases were places of death, the image of the grim reaper's maw seemed to appear in their destruction...not to mention their facades.

And rising even higher than the Skull Castle's destruction was the outline of an all too familiar saucer-shaped transport. Wily, making a clean getaway. For another fight.

Rock knew he didn't have much time before the destructive shockwave would reach him...and send him flying for a loop. But he had enough time to settle his thoughts.

Wily had gotten away. This time. But the next time, as Wily himself had said...

"Next time, Wily..." Mega Man said quietly, turning about and lowering his hands to his sides. "Next time."

And then he too vanished.

Later reports indicated foliage had been felled for a mile and a half radius around the now atomized Skull Castle.

* * *

He would keep coming back. Until I lay dead at his feet, or until he lay in prison, it would go on. After reconstructing his own Robot Masters to their original condition, Cossack signed on as Light's part-time assistant. Between the two of them, they were able to enhance my Mega Buster even further, increase the yield of the plasma supershot to resemble a fireball almost as big as I was.

The world was just as taken aback by the news of Wily's narrow escape from death as I had been. They had presumed him dead, thought the woes of their age were at last over.

_But it took only Wily and his madness to prove that the true woes had yet to begin._

Cossack was declared innocent unanimously in the world court, pardoned for his actions. By then he didn't care anymore. All he cared about could not be given to him by a piece of paper from the international justice system. It lay close to him. His daughter. His robots. And a new mission...to help stop Wily.

We didn't see Blues for a while after that. It was a couple of years, in fact...

And peace, however valuable it was, remained as fragile as ever.

Another wave of destruction swept over the land, in the form of eight more Robot Masters, completely different than any that had ever come before. One even managed to take control of the orbiting asteroid defense platform, a structure humanity had sent up into space in 2072 to fend off the threat of spaceborne debris headed for Earth.

It was simple enough. It was a tactic I'd seen before. The eight had taken over very specific and crucial centers globally. Stone Man was in the Nevada mountains, leading mining operations to relocate buried nuclear weapons. Wave Man, the massive fresh water reservoir kept underneath the Himalayan mountain range. Crystal Man had overthrown all defenses at one of the largest Energen crystal producing quarries ever discovered, threatening the production of the core components of modern computers and communications systems. Napalm Man was in the Treeborg rainforest of India, and if he was able to finish his work there, would have ended the oxygen producing capabilities in the region. Gravity Man had broken into a research and development military base in the Western United States, Charge Man had hijacked the European train system, and Gyro Man was wreaking havoc in the high altitude weather observation multiplatforms above Nigeria.

What made it all the worse this time was that the man I called both father and mentor was gone.

He'd been kidnapped...by none other than Protoman.

_I know how weird it sounds...but it was a figure in gray and red with a plasmaburst proof shield slung over his back, and a fluttering yellow bandana tied around his neck...That bandana was all that remained after Blues vanished, laughing insanely as he threw Wily into an air transport and flew off._

It was during this time that Cossack truly came into play. Without Doctor Light to aid me, I would have been in serious danger. Cossack offered a source of safe harbor for me while recharging after missions, as well as the invention of a new robotic assistant blessed with search and destroy capabilities.

Roll kept the house in line, while Eddie, Rush, and then close to the end of my missions, Beat, raced around the globe. We had to stop it again. We had to stop the Fifth Robot Rebellion.

But my heart did break in those dark days.

_I'd lost my father...and my own brother had turned against me..._

What caused my stomach to turn more than anything else was the response that the world gave to the Fifth Robot Rebellion. Cossack taped one broadcast for me so I could watch...And I still haven't repaid him for the TV I shot out.

**_"The Fifth Robot Rebellion is in full swing, with the Robot Masters leading the charge all having taken over points of strategic interest. However, for all the dangers that this newest conflict brings, public sentiment remains indifferent. Robot Rebellions, it seems, have become commonplace. Expected. Disliked, but no longer feared. We have Mega Man to thank for that, the people's savior. Already reports are seeping in that the Blue Bomber is once more on the job, stopping the attacks dead in their tracks...Experts say that this will blow over within two weeks, if not less..."_**

_THEY all got to move on with their lives. They got to return to their crying babies, their car payments, their luxury houses with pool tables and the Jacuzzi two sizes too small...Only my life was torn apart. Only mine._

Damnit, why did THEY get to relax? Why did THEY get to say, "Oh, it's not my problem..."HE'LL" take care of it while I sit back and eat my Happy Meal..."

And that's when it hit me. How alone I felt. How there was nobody else in the entire world who could understand how I felt. How so very tired of doing this I was.

If humans got this condition, it might be labeled Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Battle Fatigue. But I couldn't get a label. In their eyes, I didn't deserve a label. I was only a robot. A robot who was built to fight.

_But I WASN'T built to fight...I was built to make things, to develop things...to be a laboratory assistant, to understand complex machinery and CREATE. It was Wily who warped my life...turned me into a robot whose purpose now became to destroy. _

Wily was the cause of all my problems. And he thought I was the cause of all of his.

And even Protoman had turned. Cossack found his Fortress in the deserts of Australia after I finished off the last Robot Master and set the world free. I remember going into that castle. I remember every inch of it, how my mind and heart felt like they were ready to be torn apart.

After trudging my way through the Three outer rings, I finally made it to the Fourth Ring. The Fortress's inner sanctum. Ascending a long shaft with its collapsing floors, I found the final shutter gate.

And there was Protoman behind it.

* * *

Protoman was still as enigmatic as ever, his eyes hidden behind the massive visor embedded in his helmet. Mega Man fought back the chill in his heart when his older brother whistled, lower and darker than ever before.

"So you finally came, little brother." Protoman said darkly, folding his arms. Mega Man took a few stumbling steps forward and pointed at him, his mind a jumbled mess of emotions.

"Why??" The Blue Bomber finally asked, his eyes looking as if he were ready to cry. If he ever had that capability.

"Why what." The red and gray figure replied in deadpan.

"Why did you do this?!"

"To prove something to you, once and for all." Protoman barked shrilly. "To prove that you're nothing more than humanity's errand boy, their stopgap to a problem they're unwilling to confront themselves. To prove that all your efforts are WASTED. Surely, you must have heard the news reports by now. 'Oh, there's another Robot Rebellion going on...But don't worry, folks! Good 'ol Mega Man will save us!' That's all you are to them, Rock. A ho-hum issue. A fifteen second soundbite. They don't care about you, and they never will."

"Where's Dr. Light? Why did you kidnap him??" Mega Man responded quickly, pushing aside the all too accurate and biting comments spat at him.

"Aah, that particular question has several answers. One, he replaced ME with YOU. Two, he's always been there to help you out. You're his favorite son, his perfect little child...So I wanted to see how you'd do if you didn't have Dear Old Dad's help this go-around." Protoman brought his right arm out and morphed it into a Buster, pointing it at Mega Man. "It seems you've done all right." He added drily.

"And then what?" Mega Man queried, backing up a bit as Protoman crept nearer and nearer.

"What, you can't figure this much out?" Protoman laughed bitterly. "I'm going to kill you. Save you the trouble of doing yourself in from all that stupid self-pity."

Mega Man had no chance to avoid his shot. It was small, compact...and dropped him to one notch on his internal operations energy with ease.

Mega Man groaned, slumped to one knee as Protoman laughed and drew nearer.

"Well, I guess it ends here then. Farewell, Mega Man...I'll make sure the world is in good hands."

But then something stopped him from going farther. A whistle. On key. Four tones, five notes.

In a flash, another figure warped into the room, yellow bandana fluttering from the air displacement. ANOTHER Protoman.

"What?!" The first Protoman barked in surprise.

"Rock, whatever this impostor's been telling you, it's a load of hogwash." The new Protoman said tersely. Mega Man was too stunned to move.

"Enough with you!" The first Protoman shouted, firing off a shot. The second Protoman laughed and jumped up into the air, dodging the shot easily and hurling down one of his own.

It struck the first Protoman in his shoulder, forcing the robot to stumble back and grunt in surprise. But what happened after that was the real surprise.

The first Protoman began to flicker and shimmer...and finally vanish, leaving a gargantuan version of the previous three castle guardians standing in its place.

"You know something?" The real Protoman muttered as he dropped down on the ground behind Rock. "I REALLY hate copies. Especially lousy ones like this Darkman holomorphic robot. God, he couldn't even get my whistle right...the Bastard..."

"Then..." Mega Man began in stunned realization. Protoman turned to him and nodded.

"Fraid so, little brother. Somebody was trying to frame me for starting the Fifth Robot Rebellion. And I can assure you I DEFINITELY didn't kidnap Doc Light. That was all Darkman's work here." Protoman rumbled. He reached behind him and pulled out an 'L' version of an energy tank from behind his back, then put it on the ground where he stood. "I've got a few other pieces of this guy's handiwork to clean up, Mega. I assume you can handle this twit?"

"Easily." Mega Man growled, feeling his familiar rage kick in.

_How dare he, how dare Darkman play on his emotions like that..._

"You will die here today, Mega Man!!" The Darkman robot rasped, his voice synthesizer fritzing as well. "I will destroy you in the name of my master!"

"Take a wild guess who THAT is." Protoman muttered quietly before warping out. Mega Man walked over and drained the energy tank his TRUE brother had left for him. Oh, Mega Man knew who, all right...

_WILY._

* * *

I've mentioned before how at certain points, my emotional circuits began a process where they overheated, almost to the point of malfunctioning...where the neural inputs were so severe I felt a surge run through me, comparable to a human's adrenaline rush.

I first experienced it in the First Robot Rebellion...which when looking back, was the most painful. Because I didn't have all my battle experience, I was fighting friends...and I'd never done it before. The rush was so intense I caused an emotion of fear in my holomorphic nemesis, Doc Robot...And though I spared his life, I left him for dead. He returned that hatred and revenge to me in the Third Robot Rebellion. That same rush was felt when after everything that had happened, I caught up with Wily, and he turned his guns against me. Something happened in that moment I fired off my final shot, in one desperate attempt to stop Wily's machinations despite my severe injuries. The emotional adrenaline rush...as it might be called, allowed me to disobey the Third Law of robotics.

**A robot must act to preserve its own life, unless such an action conflicts with the first two Laws.**

Before, I had disobeyed the Second Law...though, still under the guise of withholding to the First. Telling Doctor Light I could not follow his orders to drop into stasis, because his well being required more immediate sleep than my own did.

When I disobeyed the Third Law, that was the beginning. It had no basis. The Second and First Laws held no precedence over it. Wily was threatening no human, and I was not following an order. I was acting under my own will, under my own morals, beliefs, and objectives. I was acting to stop Wily, because no one else could...a decision that still haunts me.

Disobeying the Third Law then had a consequence. It should have been death. By a quirk of fate or God or pure circumstance, whatever you believe in, that consequence was LIFE. The shutdown initiated in the core of my brain where the Three Laws lay forced the Virus program out of its niche...allowing the Antivirus program designed by Roll and Dr. Light to destroy it completely. I was saved.

But that still shook me. And ever since then, I've grown only closer and closer to that haunting step that gave me nightmares so many years ago...

_That I would defy the First Law._

Every time that rage erupts in me again, provides that definitive edge that allows me to win the most crucial of battles, it grows stronger. More potent. Longer lasting. As if a gas tank that grows larger by use, the fuel for my fire gains more and more in its potency and quantity.

I went on to stop Wily's Fifth Robot Rebellion dead in its tracks. With Beat flying by my side and hunting Wily's vanishing Warmachine out of the darkness, the madman was sent fleeing down the immense hallways of his Skull Fortress, only to reveal that Doctor Light had been held captive by Wily all along. And then I remembered what Wily had said in the end of the Fourth Robot Rebellion...

_"Rebellion after Rebellion will be instilled, Rock. Innocents will suffer. Until at long last, I finally triumph! Cossack was a puppet, Kalinka was his strings...There will be others, Rock. I WILL NEVER STOP!!"_

The Skull Fortress began to collapse on top of all of us then, and doing the only thing I could, I held it up. Wily escaped laughing, leaving me and Doctor Light to die...

But we didn't. Protoman's familiar whistle echoed in the halls, and I found the weight of the ceiling freed from my grasp. Grabbing Light, I tore off into a safer section of hallway, eventually leading to our freedom. Protoman had saved us...and yet he never claimed the heroic deed as his own. Only his whistle betrayed his responsibility.

And Wily escaped again.

It was the winter of 2080 the next time anything of importance happened. Wily had remained hidden and off plotting somewhere...neither head nor tail of him or his devilish Robot Masters had been seen. Everyone thought, for a time, and just as they had before, that perhaps it was safe. Perhaps it was finally over.

To herald the new age, a tournament was held. A tournament open to all comers to see who could build the strongest Robot Masters. It was sponsored, oddly enough, by a rich gentleman by the name of Mr. X. Biographical data revealed he was legit...made his money as an arms dealer back in the Wars of 2040, felt bad because of how he'd profited where so many had died, and had been a philanthropist ever since. The Treeborg project of the Second Rainbow had been given a sizeable amount from him.

Everything seemed on the up and up. And so the tournament went on. It was a success, too. Eight challengers overcame all competition, aside from one another. Clearing the brackets, they entered the final round. Knight Man, Wind Man, Yamato Man, Centaur Man, Flame Man, Blizzard Man, Tomahawk Man and Plant Man. It was these eight that would challenge each other for the title of best Robot Master.

But that never came. In a coup that left everyone stunned, Mr. X stole the eight Robot Masters before the contest ever reached that final bracket. More stunning was what Mr. X rambled about in his farewell speech...that all along, Wily had been nothing more than a puppet underneath Mr. X's watchful eye. And it made sense, in a way...How else could Wily manage to build Skull Castle after Skull Castle?? His pocket money? More and more, it seemed that Mr. X might be right...

_But then, that didn't matter in the end._

I was still Mega Man. And they were Robot Masters on a rampage. Cossack and Light shifted into overdrive, designing enhancements for Rush to allow him to MERGE with me, in two different kinds of armor suits.

There was no Wily this time, I thought to myself. This time it was different. This time, I was dealing with the menace behind the menace...

But that wasn't the case.

Like all the times before, eight Robot Masters fell before me. Eight abilities were transferred to me via Weapons Copy. And like before, I laid seige to the lair of the villain. Mr. X's Fortress.

The last time this had happened, where I ran off to someone else's lair aside from Dr. Wily's first, had been Protoman's. Or rather, Darkman's. Before that had been Cossack's. This time, there was no way. Mr. X was acting on his own, without coercion.

_There comes a time when all the cosmic tumblers fall into place, and the Universe opens itself to you..._

I arrived in Mr. X's sanctum, and did away with all his pathetic guardians...and then his Warmachine itself. Years of fighting Wily's madness had prepared me...this time, there was no challenge. No rage erupted. It wasn't Wily, it wasn't Wily...

_But it was._

Mr. X was real, all right...real and DEAD. Dr. Wily had killed off the retired arms dealer and taken his place...it had all been part of his scheme, to summon eight new Robot Masters under the guise of world progress.

_And he reached an all time low, then...not just blackmailing someone, or framing someone...now he'd KILLED someone in the pursuit of his goals._

The rage returned. His new castle was found.

And this time...this time, something would have to budge.

* * *

Wily must have gone senile this time around. His Skull Castle had been as difficult as usual...but his final Warmachine was nothing but the same tactic he'd used in the last two Rebellions.

"I'll DESTROY YOU, Mega Man!!" Wily ranted, sending his craft up into the air and firing off countless plasmabursts.

"Enough." Mega Man said quietly, sliding and dodging away from Wily's shots. He was torn up, scarred, his armor was even missing in places to reveal the bare wiring underneath. It hadn't been an easy fight, but it had been one that felt different. For once, Rock felt no fears. No doubts. Just the pure knowledge that Wily had to be stopped, here and now. His voice was subdued for a reason, but Wily could never detect it.

Beat flew by Mega Man's side, fluttering and sweeping the room with his cartoonish optics for any sign of Wily's craft reappearing. He chirped excitedly and pointed with a wingtip, and Mega Man turned and fired again. His Buster shot off a strange whirling blade weapon...the Silver Tomahawk.

It embedded into the side of Wily's vehicle with a sickening _kerrrrack_ and caused sparks to fly in all directions. Wily roared in disbelief as he tried to phase back out, only to find that Mega Man's shot had broken his cloaking system.

"Your madness ends here, Wily. There's no veil of insanity to hide behind now." Mega Man demanded, sending Beat off to collide into the side of the Warmachine with a grinding squeal. Beat returned from his high-powered corkscrew attack, dropping the thin plasma spike that had formed from his mouth. "Always the same damned trick...Get a new flying saucer, equip it with a cloaking device...Damnit, don't you realize the dangers?!"

"Loss of mental faculties in biological life?" Wily rasped crazily. "Those testing reports were biased and written by doddering fools stuck in the past!!" Mega Man gritted his teeth. Cloaking devices were notorious for causing damage. They were only safe for the most mindless of robotic drones, for like warp transport, it caused mental degradation in all biologics. Not even higher level functioning robots were immune from a cloak field's numbing effects. But to Wily, a man who had lived in insanity for ten years, the negative effects were negligible. Everything was negligible...if it meant he might be able to destroy Mega Man.

"You blackmailed Cossack...you framed my brother...and NOW, YOU HAVE KILLED ANOTHER HUMAN BEING INTENTIONALLY." Mega Man spat out. "It wasn't in self-defense, not even under the slightest amount of that. It was done out of cold blood!"

"That doddering Mr. X had his time slowly coming to an end anyhow!" Wily snorted. "So what if I helped him along to his death?! Besides, you should have seen the look in his eyes when I held that plasma blaster to his head..." Wily giggled insanely at that.

Finally, Mega Man snapped. But unlike before, it wasn't a normal snap. It was a cold one of pure logic.

"Wily, you are the worst monster this planet has ever seen." Mega Man growled. "And this time, I SWEAR...You will not get away with it!!"

Wily swerved his oddly proportioned saucer about and fired off another barrage of shots, this time managing to nick the Blue Bomber with a few. That barely made a difference. Picking himself up and easing the pain of his wounds with another E-Tank, Mega Man narrowed his eyes and leveled his Buster again.

"It all boiled down to this, didn't it Wily?!" Mega Man shouted above the roar of the Warmachine's thrusters. "In the end, it's just you and me, and SOMEBODY HAS TO BUDGE."

Wily began to respond with a taunt of his own...but he never got a chance to finish it. Three Silver Tomahawks buried themselves deeply into his craft, forcing the machine into auto-destruct. Crying out in shock, Wily barely made it free of the groaning montrosity before it blew.

It had happened like this countless times before...With Wily avoiding death inside of his cockpits each and every time by bailing out. Only this time it was different.

There was nowhere for him to escape to as Mega Man drew nearer and loomed over him, his tiny blue attack bird fluttering over his shoulder. There was no way that the world would show mercy to him now. It was different...and it was over.

"And that somebody is you." Mega Man finished resignedly. Wily whimpered and began bowing to Mega Man, prostrating himself on the ground as he'd done countless times before.

Wily's bowing was ended as Mega Man lifted him up by the scruff of his lab coat and fumed. There was terror in Wily's eyes as he stared face to face with the Blue Bomber, held aloft by one of the robot's hands only.

"Doctor Albert William Wily...I place you under arrest."

"You can't arrest me..." Wily protested suddenly. "You're just a robot!"

Beat chirped a moment longer and then warped off, his mission completed. It was just Mega Man and Wily now, and Rock lifted Wily closer so the mad scientist could smell his hot, angry breath.

"Get this through your head right now, Wily...because I want you to remember this when you're rotting in jail for all the suffering you've caused." Mega Man did not blink. "I am more than a mere robot."

And thus, it ended. The Sixth Robot Rebellion was over with...by a whimper, and not a bang.

* * *

_"After ten years of madness, the tyrannical Dr. Wily has at last been brought in to face charges. He has been brought before the world's judgement before, once facing a limited sentence, another time, grueling mental therapy. But at long last, common sense has prevailed over sympathy. Having already been given two chances, Dr. Wily was deemed by a special session of the U.N. as being unrepentant and set in his ways. Thus, he is to be sent to the Kotobuki maximum security prison in Japan for a term of life with no parole. Justice has at last been served, and the world can finally breathe. For there is no longer any doubts that the menace of Wily has finally been silenced._

_ The world owes its new age of peace and prosperity to Mega Man, who after handing Wily over to the author..."_

The black haired figure on the couch promptly shut off the flatscreen TV with a punch of the remote, then set it down on the coffee table beside him and stared up at the ceiling.

"Who after handing Wily over to the authorities, warped away to try and get on with his life." Rock finished glumly. Roll walked in, an old fashioned duster in one hand as she hummed a cheery tune. She had to do a double-take before realizing her big brother was in the room.

"Morning, sleepyhead!" Roll chirped, bringing Rock's focus back to reality. "I see you're up from stasis and raring to go." The Blue Bomber lifted his weary eyes up to her and blinked once.

"Raring to go?? Roll, you saw how bashed up I was when I came in..." Roll looked at him with genuine concern at long last, sitting down beside him.

"You gonna be all right, Rock?" Mega Man shrugged, unable to answer the question. "Rock, you finally put Wily away. He'll never be able to cause any more problems ever again...you don't have to fight anymore! Doesn't that make you happy?"

"I guess it just hasn't sunk in yet." The robot said finally. He turned to Roll. "Just how am I supposed to feel? Happy?? Somehow, I don't feel happy. I don't feel sated." He hung his head a bit in shame. "I've been fighting off Wily's schemes for ten years...and now that it's finally over, I can't even laugh and exclaim that it's finally over."

"Wily didn't change you that much, my dear brother." Roll reassured him, leaning against his shoulder and ruffling his hair. "Maybe you've just spent so much time stuck in the danger zone...you've forgotten how to live. What life is really about. But he hasn't changed you. You're a different person when you wear that uniform. That isn't the you sitting beside me right now."

"Lemme guess..." A new voice rang out in Light's living room, precluding an all too familiar whistle. "Rock is somewhere between the realm of happy and sad, and can't figure out a way to break free?"

Blues walked into the room, dressed in a casual red T-Shirt, his sunglasses, his black hair that matched Rock's own, and a yellow scarf draped about his neck.

"Hey Rock, glad to see you made it back alive." He offered casually, plopping down beside his two siblings. "I'll bet that Energy Balancer came in handy."

"You keep giving me stuff like you have been and some day I'm gonna ask for your Protoshield." Mega Man said lightheartedly. He could almost hear Blues' eyes narrow at that comment.

"Hell, you're gonna have to fight me if you wanna use THAT." Blues readjusted his scarf. "Rock, I'm going to tell you some things that will come in handy. Emotions are a pretty fantastic thing, but you can't let them get the better of you. The past is the past. You can't change it, Rock, and you can't dream about how it could have been better. Because if you do get stuck in that mindset that life is shit, guess what? IT WILL BE. Sure, things could be peachier. But they aren't. And you have to live with that. So, you don't know what to think anymore?? I'll recap for you. Wily is finally in jail. After ten years of you duking it out with him, it's all said and done with. Two, you can get back to your regular life, if you ever had one. Time to pick up on all those forgotten jigsaw puzzles that have been collecting dust. Take up knitting, learn a dead language, but do SOMETHING."

"Is that what you did?"

"I learned how to whistle." Blues replied easily. He reached over and rubbed Rock's head with his hand. "Chill, buddy. Just chill. I dealt with this same kind of crap myself. Between me and Roll, we'll help you ease into your new life without Wily."

Mega Man liked the sound of that, and for the first time since the whole mess surrounding the Sixth Robot Rebellion had begun, he smiled.

"Life without Wily..." He mused, "Is something I could get used to."

* * *

We had six months of that. Six months where I WASN'T Mega Man, just Rock. Just the quixotic fellow who walked the streets unrecognized. That was a fun feeling...being just another face in the crowd. Dressed like any other teenaged Japanese boy, I could walk about and just be another person in life. It was only my distinctive blue armor that gave me away to the common passerby, and without it...Well, I didn't have to worry about all those stupid autographs.

Blues and I would just walk around the streets of Tokyo, he in his dark glasses and scarf, and me in an easygoing light blue T-Shirt. We went grocery shopping, ran errands...Whatever came to mind.

I suppose the adjustment was hard for me to make because there'd been times before we assumed that peace had finally come. We'd jumped at those chances, only to have them taken from us. I guess I just got wary.

_You ever have that line of thinking...? That perhaps it's all finally said and done with? That maybe you can breathe..._

Fate never did smile on me. The best she ever seemed to do was avert her gaze to others, before eventually returning to me.

I learned many things in my lifetime, but one of the most bittersweet lessons is that peace never lasts.

* * *

"You've got five minutes." The Kotobuki prison guard said firmly. Doctor Light blinked his brown eyes and nodded once sadly. Rush also ruffed in response, sitting down beside his master.

Dr. Light had gotten older since it had all begun. And so had Wily. Now as the two stared at one another through the plastiglass barrier between the visitors and inmates' portions of the visiting room, they could see that time hadn't treated either soul that well.

"Hello, Will." Dr. Light murmured quietly over the lipmike and earpiece receiver the guards had given him. Wily blinked a few times before speaking into his own.

"It's been a long time, Tom." The mad scientist replied, no hint of paranoia in his voice. That was what stunned Light. He had expected Wily to go berserk, to start bouncing off the walls and frothing at the mouth. Instead, there was a calm about the man he had once called friend. A calm that seemed to emanate resignation...but the sharp glint in Wily's eyes betrayed that, offering no sign of surrender. "More than eight years now."

"It didn't have to happen like it did. I wanted to believe you'd changed...that you were serious about making amends for your actions." Light said quietly. Wily narrowed his eyes. Very well. If Tom wanted to play the emotionless angle, he could as well.

"What would you have me say to you, Thomas?" Wily asked quickly. He shrugged. "Considering how many Robot Rebellions I've been involved in, how many things I've done, it would seem clear to any one of us that I'm beyond hope. I was then, and I certainly am now."

"That's why you're here."

"I'm here because of Mega Man." Wily retorted sharply. His eyes glowered at Light finally, his resolve and control beginning to show signs of cracking. "Because HE stopped me."

"Fine." Light answered. "If that's how you want to see it, Wily." He switched over to his associate's last name, and the doctor in prison garb took notice.

"Aah, so at long last you break that chain that still allows you to call me by the name you used when we were friends."

"That time has long since passed."

"Our time has long since passed." Wily said. He leaned over until his face, his wild white unkempt hair and mustache were almost pressed against the clear barrier between them. "Tom, you still don't get it...I had to show the world the error of their ways!"

"The world's always had problems." Light barked. "And the world will work them out. Wily, you tried to prove how weak humanity was. Instead, you proved how strong its spirit could become."

"Humanity's spirit..." Wily chortled darkly. "This is the same humanity which nearly pushed itself to extinction in the Wars of 2040. If it hadn't been for us and the Second Rainbow, would 'humanity' still be alive?? Face it, Tom. Nothing will ever change. No matter how much mankind advances technologically, they still haven't worked to solve the CORE of every single crisis. Humanity's SPIRIT."

"The Wars of 2040 are over, Wily." Light said firmly. "It will never happen again." Wily mulled over that before pulling back with a slow smile.

"You say that...But do you truly believe it??" Wily's menacing grin seemed to burn right through Light's skull, lay his emotions and thoughts bare. "You lost HER to humanity's spirit. Humanity's inherent violence and barbarism. You forget how it works, Tom...One generation remembers the pain and suffering of War, and that is what stops them from ever attempting it again...But they produce a new generation, one that has not seen the effects of War firsthand, who only hear and know about it through history books and their parent's tales...It is a sweet forbidden poison, violence is. And until humans have felt its negative effects, nothing can stop them from going down that road again." Wily laughed a little bit at that. "You lost her, Tom. You know the cost of War. You know what it's like to be denied a life. But do they?? The children of the world, Tom...do they know?! How could they?!"

"Shut up." Light growled. "Just shut up. I won't have you talking about Vanessa that way..."

"A pretty face, to be sure..." Wily mused. He looked at his associate in disgust. "She never deserved you anyway."

Despite himself, Light roared out a malediction and slammed his hand into the clear barrier between them, rattling it as he pulled back with a wince clear on his face.

"You're weak, Tom." Wily said bitterly. He pulled back and crossed his arms as best as he could, with the manacles clapped around his wrists. "You always were...and now you're even weaker. You're one of the reasons this world must be taught...must be shown..."

"I think we're done here." Light cut him off tersely. He stood up to leave and reached for the two way communicator on his head. But Wily hummed a little bit and stopped Light from yanking it off.

"Not quite." Wily mumbled, finishing off Blues' familiar melody. He looked at Light with a look bordering insanity and confidence at the same time. "I have been imprisoned for six months now. Six long months, during which I've had plenty of time to think and ponder. It cannot be stopped, Tom. War cannot be stopped. The violence cannot be stopped. You could no sooner deprive humanity of its destructive nature than deprive it of life. If I am not the violence...then something else will be."

"You're wrong." Light said back bitterly. "You're insane and you're wrong."

"Oh, THEY think I'm insane..." Wily laughed back, tilting in his chair. "But only time can judge me, Tom. Only time. And time is about to grant me an early parole."

A guard came through Wily's side of the door and tapped the former villain on the shoulder.

"Time's up." Light heard through his receiver. Wily looked at Light and grinned that insane grin once more, then let himself be led off, humming Protoman's melody all the while.

Light shook his head.

"God have mercy on your wretched soul, Will." Still wearing his receiver, Wily heard Tom's comment and laughed.

"God have mercy on the world, you mean...I'm already destined for Hell." He turned about and looked at Light again, laughing with all the psychotic energy embedded in his mind.

The prison guard finally took Wily's headset off and shut the power down. Weak and tired, Light petted Rush on the head and walked out his exit.

"Let's go, Rush." The red robotic dog ruffed once and then trotted beside him.

They were about a mile from Kotobuki prison when Rush and Dr. Light suddenly realized what Wily had meant about time granting him an early parole.

Explosions were slowly tracing a path towards the penitentiary.

* * *

It had ended. The peace had ended and the war had begun again.

_Just before I had captured Wily in his former Skull Castle, he had finished building a new set of Robot Masters. Four of them. _

He'd set them out in another one of his concealed Skull Castles, and set them on standby. It had only been a matter of time then. Six months later, they hadn't received his signal that everything was still all right. So they'd activated, and sought him out. And found him.

The reports that came back from Kotobuki were insane. I was only there long enough to stop a rampaging road leveler with weaponry from wrecking the city streets any further and to watch in dismay as Wily flew off laughing, safe in another one of his saucers.

_The devastation was unimaginable...as if a bomb had hit. Kotobuki itself was torn apart from the rampage I arrived too late to prevent, only stop...And in Kotobuki Prison itself, it was as if a plague had swept through. Guards, inmates, even the Warden...everyone lay dead, in some state of frozen, fried, severed, and gooey goriness. The Robot Masters had done this. Wily had ordered them to. The security camera footage had survived, and it told us all...how they broke in, found Wily's cell, and helped evacuate him to a familiar flying saucer they had brought along with them. But it hadn't ended there...Wily, possessed by another rage of madness, of retribution and sick pleasure, had ordered his new Robot Masters to kill everyone. Kill everyone inside the building. And then he'd flown off to jeer at me and Light and Rush as we stood watching the carnage unfold from Kotobuki's main roadway._

He was back. And he was more dangerous than ever.

_It was the third time I had brought him in to face justice. The first time, they had given him a slap on the wrist. The second, intense mental counseling. The third time...the Sixth Robot Rebellion...was when they finally realized there was no hope in Wily turning over a new leaf, reverting to normal life and living as a productive member of society._

Every time was difficult. Every time brought me to the brink of collapse, both physically and mentally. Every time he instilled a Robot Rebellion, another piece of me died trying to stop it.

_And yet nothing stopped him. Not fear, not sympathy, not even prison. _

And I think it was then that I realized something.

Wily would never stop...until he was dead.

* * *

Turbo Man was no more, and his conquered domain in Tokyo's rubber disposal dump had been taken back from his control. The conflict had tested Rock to new limits, and yet at the same time granting him so many new abilities. For one, his Rush Jet power suit from the Sixth Robot Rebellion had returned...only now in its current mode as the Super Adapter. The Rocket Punch, the Energy Balancer, and even poor little kidnapped Beat lay safe within his hands, all ready to be put into action. Rush had a new improved Rush Jet and a new Rush Search mode, and Auto, Light's newest engineering robot, had his Super Bolt. Tokyo and all of Japan was once more free from the devastation that Wily was so hellbent on bringing upon it.

It left a bitter taste in Rock's already sour mouth whenever he thought of Wily and this newest Robot Rebellion. But now with Japan, the only place left attacked by the Seventh Robot Rebellion now safe from the marching hordes, it meant he could return home and rest at least. Until Wily's new Skull Castle was found, there was little else that could be done. Besides, Mega Man mused as he powered up his warp generator and accessed his home's jump coordinates, he had to see how his new ally Bass was doing. That was a serious wound Shade Man had given him...

_Noo..._

Horror and disbelief were the only two thoughts that ran through his mind as he opened his eyes from the warp transport and registered the destruction around him.

_This was home when I left...did a bomb hit?!_

"Heeelp!!" Came a familiar feminine voice.

"ROLL!!" Mega cried out, snapping back to his senses at the sound that made him go into pure panic. If anything had happened to her, so help him...

He sighed in visible relief as he rounded the corner of the living quarter's hallway and found Roll struggling in two sets of magnetic clamps holding her wrists and ankles taut together. Fortunately, she looked undamaged, just very frightened and weak.

With power that only became possible through the unbelievable pressures of his life, the Blue Bomber tore the magnetic clamps off of Roll and freed her from her bonds. The blond haired robot stood up and tried to brush some of the scuffing off of her torn dress. She finally sighed and turned to Rock, pulling him close in a hug.

"God, I missed you..." Rock embraced his sister back quickly in an even tighter grip, relieved she was unharmed. "It all just happened so fast..."

"Who did this?!" Mega Man demanded. Roll pulled away from the hug and let her blue eyes fall to the floor.

"He...he ran into the lab." A new set of emotional overloads began to coarse through Rock's mind then...

_Oh no...Dr. Light!! And Bass!!_

Mega Man rarely moved with such speed as he did then, rushing through the rest of the trashed house and working his way into the laboratory. Like everything else, it lay in total disarray. Wiring was laid bare, consoles were ripped to shreds, and everywhere was the stench of ozone, the one pure sign of plasmafire.

Light lay dazed and struggling to get up off in one corner of his lab, close to the massive flatscreen monitor he rallied communications through.

"Dad!!" Mega cried out, racing towards him and kneeling down to support the man who had created him.

"I'm all right..." Light said wearily, grunting as his wobbly knees pushed him back up to a standing position. "I'm all right, Rock."

"It was Wily..."

"No. It was Bass." Light stammered, walking over and sitting down in a chair that had somehow avoided the destruction. The Blue Bomber stood there for a moment, stunned at the announcement. When at last he could speak, it was in incredulity.

"What??"

"Bass went berserk..." Light managed to eke out, rubbing at his forehead. "I was repairing him, and then all of a sudden he pushes me to the ground and starts running around like a madman, screaming about where the plans are. Roll tried to stop him with some magnetic clamps, but..."

"She's all right. I found her first." Rock reassured Light, surprised he could say that much in his dumbfounded stupor. Light looked years older.

"He found them. All my blueprints, my schematics...Plans for enhancements for you and Rush..."

"Oh no..."

"And that wasn't all he took..." Light whispered, shutting his eyes tightly against a force Rock couldn't see. "He took...he took..." Doctor Light seemed to be stuck in his stammer, and before Rock could prod the rest of the answer out of him, the shattered laboratory chittered with the sound of an incoming transmission.

A familiar, frenzied face appeared on the cracked flatscreen display above them...grinning insanely as it stared at the inhabitants of the sacked lab.

"WILY." Mega Man spat out. Wily snarled at his foe and shook his head.

"Well, well...It would seem that little Rock has triumphed once more and killed off eight more of my Robot Masters. But no matter...I've gotten used to you being able to pull that particular stunt off after all these years. This time, it provided a very useful distraction from a far deeper goal."

"Just what the Hell are you getting at, Wily?!" Mega Man demanded, stepping forth and shaking a fist. Wily leaned back and cracked his knuckles, then glowered at the screen.

"You truly are naïve, you robot. Don't you get it?! Bass is MY robot. I made him!! And his mutt Treble as well!!"

"Goddamn you..." Light muttered. Wily glared at his former partner.

"And you...You, Tom, have been a very busy boy from the plans I've seen. Don't you worry...I'll put them to good use. Perhaps Bass and Treble will be able to destroy Rock with their new enhancements..."

"It ends here, Wily!!" Mega Man proclaimed, pointing a hard finger with an even harder glare. "You're a monster...a sickening heartless monster who brings about the death of innocents. You gotta be stopped, and I'm gonna stop you!!" The conviction in his voice burned bright, like the fires of a supernova waiting to be unleashed. It frightened Light to hear such acidic words come from his son...Yet Wily seemed unfazed, curling his lower lip into a tight smile before nodding with a cruel chuckle.

"Well, you're certainly welcome to try...I'll leave the light on for you." Wily said prophetically. The vox and video cut off...leaving only a freeze frame image of a map and a particular pair of warp jump coordinates on the screen.

"Rock..." Light said quickly, stumbling over and putting a hand on his son's shoulder. "You don't have to do this...We can let the police handle this..."

Slowly, the Blue Bomber turned until his gaze met with his creators'. The embers that burned in his deep blue eyes struck into Light, chilling him with that gaze of purpose locked into that snarl of embedded rage.

"No." He issued hoarsely. "Dad, you don't get it...Remember the First Robot Rebellion?? The HSL tried to attack his Skull Castle with far greater numbers than the police here have...and they were wiped out. I'm it. I'm the only one he wants, I'm the only one who can get in and stop him."

"But..."

"I DON'T ENJOY THIS ANY MORE THAN YOU DO." Rock shouted angrily. "But the fact is that I have to. These stupid Robot Rebellions will just claim more and more innocent lives until Wily is stopped. I can't live with the thought of Wily ordering even more humans to die for his sickening cause...I can't, because the Laws don't ALLOW IT!!"

And that was when it struck Light. That even though it had been Rock who had volunteered to undertake this life, to don the armor and Buster and save the world time and time again, it was almost more obligation than personal choice. The First Law...The First Law was inherent to the decision, and it was even now.

"I'm sorry..." Light finally said, pulling Rock close into a hug. "I'm sorry this was how it all happened."

Roll walked into the laboratory from the doorway and shook her head.

"Hey..." Rock pulled away from his father and looked at Roll with his same concentrated glare.

"You keep dad safe while I'm gone."

"And just where are you going??" Roll asked incredulously.

Her brother seemed to grow eons older at that statement...because it only had one answer, and he hated to say it. Slowly, he turned about and locked his weary, angry eyes on Light, then back on Roll.

"I'm going to save the world."

He made sure he was a fair distance from Light and Roll, and then warped off, a line of blue fire heading towards the sky.

_It had to stop. It had to stop here and now._

* * *

_And all of you call ME the hero. Just because I'm the only person who steps up to the plate whenever a madman tries to turn robot hordes against the world._

Wily's latest Skull Castle was a beast. Nowhere near as tough as his first one, the most Hellish one had been in terms of mere obstacles. But the guardians proved to be many and powerful, pushing me to my limits each time. And still I passed. As thunder and lightning roared outside and storm clouds swirled about, churning both fate and the stratosphere in its glow, I made my way past the barrage of plasma cannons and into the second floor entrance.

_I didn't want to be the hero, all right?! I didn't WANT to do this over and over again...All I wanted to do was to just be left alone, to have Wily's ominous presence vanish. As long as Wily was around, the world was still in danger...as long as the world was in danger, I COULDN'T QUIT._

Bass faced me twice. Once on his own, in a connecting airlock room between the outer and inner regions of the First Ring, and then again in a gigantic swirling tower of gusting fans and rampant winds that made the fight between our fused selves all the more insane. And yet not even he could stop me.

_Logic would say that it was experience that allowed me to win. I had faced countless Robot Masters before the ebony armored robot with his gold trim, and in his fused state, purple trim as well...Surely all those victories amounted to something of my intuitition, my finesse, my ability to predict, respond, and annihilate._

Then there are times I feel the logic slip away from me. Where reason fails, where I can feel nothing but the pain. The pain of emotions searing through my mind, drowning everything else out...

_And it was stronger now, stronger than it had ever been. It coarsed through my circuits like a thick syrup, highlighting the entire endeavor in a deep shade. Imagine the world...how you see it normally. Then imagine that all of a sudden, a veil drops down and covers it all. What you see, what you hear is all altered, changed..._

I faced yet another version of Guts Man. It had been the third time I'd seen him in some form or another, the other two having occurred in the First and Second Rebellions. I faced a massive robotic turtle that could only be hurt when he popped his head out of his shell. And a massive repulsor-equipped skullhead that chased me down a winding bridge from the Third to the Fourth Ring while firing off missiles and ground searing lasers.

_And none of them stopped me. None of them could. Not as I was..._

And then after destroying all eight Robot Masters once more in Wily's all too familiar teleportation chamber, and blasting his gigantic Skullwalker 'Mech into scrap...

That's when it all came to a boil. Skull Castle was falling apart around us, the self-destruct already having been initialized upon the Skullwalker's destruction. Wily stared me down, once again in the cockpit of a cloak-equipped saucer pod with every sort of cannon imaginable equipped.

_He wouldn't stop. He would never stop. And for all the neurological damage he'd suffered, Wily's actions pushed him past redemption ever again. _

_ He had killed innocents. He had ordered the deaths of people whose only crime was that they were there when he looked at them._

Emotions are a powerful thing. Protoman was right about that. But he never could have predicted just how far...

_Just how far into my murderous guise as 'Mega Man' that my emotions would take me..._

* * *

"Scream the songs of woe and torment, see the fighters eternal Hellbent, screeching in their ghastly cries, FOR ONLY ONE SHALL BE THE ONE WHO DIES!!" Wily snarled, a glob of spit hurling against the interior of his cockpit's bubble shield as he rambled his insanity.

Mega Man slid across the floor, narrowly dodging the dangerous blasts of replicating synth-ice and napalm fueled fire that slammed to the ground behind him. Still, the two other shots, straight blasts of supercharged plasma struck him at the base of his neck despite his efforts, forcing the Blue Bomber to wince in pain as he came back up to his feet and snarled at his opponent.

"NOW IT'S MY TURN!!" Mega Man roared, his purple and green colorings losing their shimmering aura of light about him as he summoned forth a pair of supercharged Wild Coils and hurled them at Wily's craft. The comical pair of weapons bounced up and down under a power of their own before jumping up and slamming into the undercarriage of Wily's craft, exploding and causing the powered shrapnel to tear one of Wily's guns into utter uselessness. Even a protruding spike was torn asunder.

Hissing, Wily punched a familiar button, fading from view as the dangerous and mind-altering cloaking field fell over him and his Warmachine.

"While the ramparts fall and crumble, while the klaxons wail in fright, the one in blue and the one in justice battle through the night..." Wily's voice echoed about, carried through the speaker system in the massive underground hangar bay.

Mega Man gritted his teeth and started to charge up another set of Wild Coils, his eyes darting about the dimly lit interior for any sign of a shimmer, a glint, some imperfection that would reveal where Wily's Warmachine lay hidden. "Damn you, Wily!!" Every moment the Blue Bomber remained in this fight, he could feel his emotions grow closer and closer to overriding him, to overpowering him...

The next thing he felt was a spike scraping along his back and sending him spinning to the ground before impaling itself straight through the forearm of his right arm. And he did the only thing he could...he screamed.

Wily laughed as if every spawn of Hell joined in a chorus along with him, his Warmachine slipping from the shadows completely to reveal the starboard spike jutting through Mega Man's arm. Watching with sick pleasure, Wily drooled over the sight of Mega Man twisting and writhing underneath him, his right arm sparking and charring...and even bleeding with the minor hydraulic fluid that served as the backup for his main systems.

_"Like an ant seen through the mason jar, he scrambles and he screams, screaming his cursed lungs for mercy through the nightmares and the dreams..."_ Wily's mind was shattered now...only the rage and the madness remained. Both centered on Rock, both driving to see his end.

"I won't let you..." The Blue Bomber slurred, his voice processor growing less coherent from the extensive energy drain on his repair systems. Wily harrumphed and swiveled his pod around, looking down in mock pity before wrenching another tortured scream from Rock. The madman grinned and activated one of his cannons, burying another yellow plasma blast into the small of Mega Man's back.

Even pain was beyond Rock now...He took no notice of the searing blast that tore away his blue body suit and exposed the delicate mechanics underneath. He only heard the roar in his ears, only saw the haze of gray over everything, only knew one single fact among all others...

_WILY HAD TO BE STOPPED..._

"Death comes for us all one day, it's the easiest tale to sell...but while all humans go to Heaven, accursed robots go to HELL!!" Wily shrieked.

Staring through his dull, unfocused eyes, Rock swiveled his head about and registered where Wily was.

"No." He said.

Wily's laugh stopped immediately at that. Rock's sudden outburst, as quiet as it was, unsettled him like no other had ever done.

He didn't even register Mega Man's left arm swing up and hurl a Wild Coil at point blank range into the remaining guns underneath his craft.

But he did notice the explosion...and the massive chain reaction it brought along with it.

Every gun was shattered and shorn off of its base from the intense shrapnel blast, and one bank of the Warmachine's repulsors was thrown offline. Wily screamed in surprise and tried to take his craft airborne again, but by then, a weak, but unbelievably focused Mega Man was on his feet, that quiet air vaporized by the same look of intense fury and hatred Wily had bestowed upon him countless times before.

"And then the madman's plans are foiled, and his dreams go up in flame...Never again to cause the fury, for this has ceased to be a game..." Mega Man hissed, lifting his left arm up and firing off another Wild Coil. His damaged right arm hung uselessly at his side, shut off from combat mode and undergoing repairs. Even draining his last E-Tank proved little help...The energy regained was almost immediately consumed by his power hungry repair systems.

Wily cursed in German and punched in his cloaking button one last time...But the cloak only finished halfway before the shrapnel of the Wild Coil exploded and engulfed it in a cloud of deadly debris.

Crackling, fizzling, the Warmachine reverted back to normal...and then screamed and whined in its death knell.

Once more, Wily escaped annihilation by the skin of his teeth, jumping free from the would-be tomb in a suicide jump and collapsing to the cold, ruined floor. And then the Warmachine exploded...leaving only silence and the distant rumbling sounds of the Skull Castle's collapse.

Mega Man's coloring reverted to normal as he deactivated the Wild Coil and stared Wily down, one arm still limp at his side, the other clenched into a fist. Likewise, the mad scientist looked back up at the one who had once more stopped him...looking older, deflated...a harmless old man who raged empty threats and fell flat of success.

"All right, you win Mega Man..." Wily rasped, his spirit crushed just as it always was every time the damnable Blue Bomber stopped him. "I'll come quietly this time."

And that was the end of it, so Wily thought. Rock would take him into custody again, stuff him in prison...it would all be over with. He had no hidden bank of Robot Masters to free him this time. To return to prison now would mean to live in that tiny concrete cell...forever. That didn't matter.

But that wasn't what happened. Mega Man seemed to totter back and forth, his weight sluggishly shifting from foot to foot as his narrowed burning blue eyes bored into the man who had brought Hell upon his existence time and time again.

"No." Mega Man finally uttered in a ragged whisper. He shook his head and took a menacing step towards the madman. "NO. Not this time, Wily...Not the same damn excuse, the same damn plea...You're never sorry, you'll never quit...And we never realized that until now."

"What?" Wily squeaked, stunned by Mega's words. The blue armored robot took another step forward and lifted his left arm up, morphing it into a Buster and letting it charge as the barrel bored straight at Wily's skull.

"Never again." Mega Man hissed, his voice growing more and more choked by the moment. "You won't stop. You'll never stop. You'll always come back, always harm more innocents...I can't allow that, Wily...not in good faith, not by my principles...YOU'RE A MONSTER, WILY. A MONSTER THAT WILL NEVER BE PENITENT FOR HIS ACTIONS!!"

The whine filled the air and mixed with the distant klaxons, and the pale green light illuminated the sudden fear on Wily's face. Nervously, he stumbled back on his butt, lifting a hand up in front of him as if to shield him from the fatal blast yet to come.

"Mega Man, you can't do this!" Wily stammered. "The First Law...you can't harm me, Mega Man! You can't because you're a robot!!"

But that didn't hold true in that moment. As everything came crashing down around them, that truth didn't enter Mega's thoughts. He only knew the rage, the solution...

"I AM **MORE** THAN A MERE ROBOT." Mega Man spat out. "It ends here, Wily. All your insane schemes, your blight and your plague dies here tonight...along with you."

It was then Wily knew fear. Because the look in the Blue Bomber's eyes, that intense hatred, that insanity that fringed on pure chaos...was one he had offered time and time again to his foe times before.

And now it was being paid back...with interest.

"DIE, WILY!!" Mega Man screamed, his Buster reaching a higher note of pitch as he prepared to unleash the hellish fury of plasma upon his nemesis.

But it never came. A massive hail of torn rafters fell all around the two, jarring the Blue Bomber from his execution and trapping Wily underneath the wreckage.

The glint faded from Mega Man's eyes once more, and his jaw fell in shock as he realized what he'd nearly done...quickly, his Buster faded away from view and he stumbled backwards, stupor overtaking him.

That was all the opportunity that Wily needed. From the crumbling Skull Castle above, a robotic mutt of purple screeched down and growled at Rock before grasping onto Wily and warping them both out of the tomb. And then a second figure appeared...Bass.

The ebony and gold armored robot sneered at Mega Man, hate and spite clear in his thoughts as he stared down the shell-shocked warrior.

"Too late this round, Mega Man!! Remember, he who hesitates is LOST!!" With that, Bass too vanished in a blast of warped fire.

And Mega Man came to his senses moments later, just in time to warp free from the Skull Castle before it all blew to pieces.

* * *

Everyone could see the fireball that erupted from Wily's Skull Castle. But what they could not see was a lone figure stumbling away from it, his footing unsteady as heat basted his back and lit up the night like a second sun.

_I...I almost..._

"Impossible..." Rock wheezed, his mind now feeling the sluggish effects of the trauma that even pondering breaking one of the ingrained Laws gave a robot. His footsteps uneven, he continued to plod on, paying no attention to the tiny rocks that embedded themselves into the soles and ridges of his steel toed boot, and even up into his leg itself. That didn't matter.

_First Law...why didn't it stop me, it should have stopped me..._

"I can't kill humans..." Rock croaked, stumbling to his knees and sitting there, half upright and in shock. "I can't..."

_But I almost did. _

Trembling, Rock lifted his functional left arm up and held it in front of his face...through eyes powered by slowly fading madness and emotional overload, he saw that tarnished shade of blue...slowly shifting, darkening, into almost a purple. But blue turned purple because of a very distinct color.

_It was red that dripped off of his fingers, off of his wrist, a slick sickening hail of dark red droplets. It stained the ground where it fell, and slowly it stained him...It was blood. Human blood._

_ **"Mega Man, you can't do this!! The First Law...you can't harm me! You can't harm me because you're a robot!!"**_

And yet that hadn't mattered...

Screaming, Rock slammed his left hand down against the barren soil, ignoring the sharp cry of pain that shot up his arm from the vicious blow. When he looked again, the blood was gone. But it didn't change matters.

**_A robot must never harm, or through inaction, allow harm to come to a human being._**

The First Law blared in Rock's mind now, a powerful force that overwhelmed his mind and thoughts. It came almost as a headache, a pounding force demanding to be heard. Groaning, the Blue Bomber curled up and laid his helmeted head on the cold ground, slowly rocking back and forth.

Something had snapped in him in those moments of the final battle...during the time when Wily had torn his right arm asunder and made it a limp, useless appendage dangling from a slackened shoulder. When every inhumanity Wily had caused over the last eleven years had joined, coalesced...and then erupted. When emotions, the most powerful force Rock ever had to face within himself had run awry...

_His emotions had overloaded his mind...drowned everything else out like a thick fog, a stupor...Everything of logic, of sanity, of the Laws themselves had been severed, cut off, been prevented from reaching him. The situation had gotten critical, and Rock had responded as he always had. With his feelings._

It was a completely different state of mind, the robot accepted finally. As he drew himself back up into a cross-legged position, he knew this. There were two sides to him. There was Rock, the robot who wanted nothing more than to remain at home and live without struggle. And then there was Mega Man. The robot that the world called upon, cried upon, set their hopes upon as the singular savior from the hands and forces of a madman they themselves had helped to bring about.

Rock had given rise to Mega Man. A strong-willed spirit that relied on his emotions in the direst of conditions to see him through...

_But just how far did it have to go?? What if next time...What if Mega Man couldn't be stopped? What if next time, the Mega Buster on his arm finished charging, DID fire...hurling a massive supershot of plasma towards Wily, towards his screeching, frightened face, melting away the weak and frail human flesh and blood before the blast ever made contact, skin dripping off of his skull like a waterfall..._

"NOOOOO!!" Rock screamed, arching his back and lifting his face to the sky, screaming with every decibel of power he could muster. He screamed for himself. For Rock. In fear.

Despite himself, as his voice died down and was once more overcome with the roar of the flames leaping high from Skull Castle, Rock trembled.

_Emotions did this. Emotions almost caused him to..._

"No." He uttered weakly. His head slowly shook back and forth, as if to agree with the point more. "No...Never again."

It was easier now. His systems had had time to repair some of the damage. Calmly, Rock got up to his feet and turned about, looking on into the flames. They burned for only moments more before growing dim and snuffing out...nothing but a gigantic cloud of smoke now. In the same way, if his emotions were like a fire, they too were snuffed out in that moment.

Rock made a pact with himself on the eve of Wily's seventh crushing defeat. He was a robot that had been given something no other robot aside from him, Bass, Roll and Blues ever had. The possibility of emotion. True emotion. Emotion that might almost seem human, and would grow stronger over time.

_But if emotions can bring me to here...bring me to a point where the Three Laws could be so overwhelmed they cannot stop my actions..._

"Never again." Mega Man said wearily, activating his warp generator. "When I fight...when I'm forced to be Mega Man, and not Rock...then I will not feel."

_Because that's the only way._

"The only way..." Rock whispered as he vanished into the stratosphere. And his voice carried in the wind, a shrill whistle that permeated its molecular thickness and bonded with it under a power of its own. That sentence was the only thing that stayed in the air...after the smoke of Skull Castle had faded, after starlight once more claimed everything in sight.

"The only way..."

* * *

Yes, Wily deserved to die. Ask any human off of the street and they would tell you no different. Especially now. Now, after Wily had escaped his life imprisonment and caused only more death. Capital punishment was rarely used by anyone anymore...but it was there.

_But even if he did deserve to die, he would not, could not die by my hand._

Emotions did this. And you know emotions far more than I ever will. So tell me. Is this what it does in humans as well? Blur away reason, rationality and logic for shaded eyes and a stupefied view of the world?

There is a fine line to be walked. Every time a Robot Rebellion begins, I am faced with a gigantic trapeeze wire, and told to walk across it.

The falling is where the danger lies. But falling from what, then? Grace? Prestige? Respect? Or yourself??

I'm not a killer. I eliminate malfunctioning robots. I'm not a killer.

_They're just robots, I tell myself...robots sent by Wily to cause pain and suffering. They have to be stopped. I have to stop them._

I'm not a killer. I'M NOT!! Wily lives...Wily is alive, and some day he will return to wreak havoc once again. He made that promise to me so many years ago...That until I was gone, or until he was dead, the war would go on. And innocents would suffer.

So there's a tradeoff. In my state of mind, where emotions controlled me, I looked at the world through blood red glasses. In that perspective, I decided that Wily had to die. The needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few...how his survival would put so many innocents at risk...

But when those glasses shattered, the truth came crashing down. No matter how true the theory was, I could not destroy Wily. I could not, because it contradicted who I was. I was a robot ingrained with the Three Laws.

_If I was different...if I was stronger, if the Three Laws held no sway over me..._

NO. NO, I can't think that...I WON'T!!

I can't change that. And in this moment, I pray to whatever God or deity exists that there will never come a time again where I am led to think that.

But it is a prayer that will go unanswered. Because there will be a next time. There will be another Robot Rebellion. There will be another Skull Castle, or Skull Fortress, or whatever...

It's inevitable. It's inevitable because neither one of us is dead yet, and as long as both of us live, Wily will keep the conflicts going.

It's moved past any logic now. He does this not out of any desire to conquer the world...he does it to get to me.

The battle is inevitable...

I can't kill him. And he has yet to kill me.

_And they call me a hero..._

* * *

There was a different air about her brother since he'd gotten back from Wily's Skull Castle a month ago, Roll finally decided. More importantly, it was something buried deep in his thoughts. It had been a quiet change, and caught in the midst of rebuilding his laboratory adjoined to his house in conjunction with Auto and Eddie, their father Dr. Light hadn't seemed to notice it. But as Roll came by with a roll of data-transfer cable for the ongoing reconstruction, she found herself watching the Blue Bomber with hawkish eyes.

Blues, like always, had said his peace after greeting Mega Man at home and then rushed off for parts unknown. It seemed to be a tradition with him, that inability to remain still and seen. Perhaps those years between 2069 and the Third Robot Rebellion had caused that...then again, perhaps it was an idiosyncrasy that had even earlier origins. But even Blues had scrutinized his brother then, mumbling something only Roll had heard before saying his final goodbyes and warping off.

_"Something happened out there...didn't it, Rock?" _

Roll nodded. Something HAD happened. But whenever they bothered to try and ask him about it, he grew tight-lipped and stubbornly silent. He tried to brush it off. Nothing had happened, he reassured them halfheartedly. The final hours of the Seventh Robot Rebellion had ended like any other. He'd blasted his way through all opposition, stopped Wily cold in his tracks. And barely managed to escape with his own life, the mad scientist and his traitorous creations Bass and Treble fleeing as well.

Of course, sometimes the physical evidence spoke volumes. To a watchful eye, a carefully trained technician...

_Rock had to be put into stasis during his repairs...The wounds were numerous, grievous, and his total system energy had laid at a low. Most unsettling of all was the damage in his mind pathways...they weren't burned or snapped. It wasn't like someone had sent a million amps blasting through his brain. No. It was different. More like a general, continual strain that had been placed on him. _

Doctor Light hadn't had to put his son through serious repairs since the end of the Third Robot Rebellion. Through the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and now the Seventh, Light had left Rock's most delicate workings alone.

"Hey, Rock." Roll finally muttered as she walked nearby and set the cable down on the table. "Whatcha up to, bud?"

"Television." Came Rock's short, chipped answer. That was about the only sort of response he gave out any more. His eyes stared blankly forwards, and Roll followed them.

The TV wasn't even on. Sighing, she shook her blond covered head back and forth.

"Sure."

_Light had left Rock's mind to itself, left it to tend to its own affairs from 2072 until now...2081. The damage to his mind's pathways emanated from what seemed to be continual resistance, a constant struggle between the core of his brain...the section that contained all primary information, including the Three Laws of Robotics...and the section of his mind that dealt with his emotions and emotional responses. It hadn't happened all at once. It was cumulative. _

But even then, the pathways couldn't be altered. They couldn't be replaced. Roll remembered the look of dread and worry on her father's face as he told her through a clenched jaw that the best he could do for her big brother was to wipe away the soot and grime, clean out the interior...and hope that somehow removing the scouring on his pathways would keep Rock functioning.

The two of them sat side by side for a few moments longer before Roll finally leaned over and tapped him on the shoulder.

"What?" He asked, finally turning his head over to look at her, slightly annoyed from the sound of it. Unfazed, Roll stared right back at him with a calm gaze.

"It's been a month now, Mega. And by now, I know something's up with you just as much as Blues does."

"I'm fine."

"Like HELL you're fine." She said acidly. She poked him in his T-Shirt covered chest. "You weren't awake when dad and I finally looked in your brain when you were zonked out. I saw the damage in there. It was cumulative, and it had been building since 2072."

"We're robots, Roll. Parts get worn out." Rock said, shrugging off her accusations.

"Look Rock, I may not be the one going out there and stopping Wily from turning the world into a wasteland every Robot Rebellion, but I BY GOD know when a physical malady has psychological origins. That damage we cleaned out in your brain was brought about because of a conflict between your emotions and your core programming."

"I don't have to listen to this." Rock grumbled, getting up and preparing to leave the room.

"Oh no you DON'T!!" Roll exclaimed angrily, jumping up and wrapping her arms around his waist, dropping them both to the floor in a writhing heap.

"H...Hey! Leggo! DAMNIT, LEGGO!!" Rock snapped, trying fiercely to pull his way free of her vicelike grip.

"No!!" Roll shouted back. "Not until you admit you have a problem! Not until you drop this mood you've been carrying for the last month and turn back into the brother I've known since before Wily went haywire!"

Rock contorted his back a bit and turned his head to look back at her. It brimmed with anger now, anger kept dormant and hidden for far too long...

"You wanna know what's going on inside my head?! _HUH?! DO YA?!_ "

"YES!!" Roll screamed back, yelling if for no other reason than she was angry. She released him and Rock climbed to his feet, staring across the air between them. Roll picked herself up and smoothed out her dress, then waited.

Rock's breathing was shallow as he collected his thoughts.

"You could never understand, Roll...you could never understand the hate and fury that lies in me. It's all Wily's fault...it's all of Wily's schemes, his madness that drives them. I feed off of my emotions, use them, turn them into weapons for my mind. I HATE WILY. It's that freaking simple!!"

He inhaled and exhaled a few more times before speaking up again.

"And it doesn't matter which Robot Rebellion it is, Roll...It's always the same. It's caused by him, caused by his perverse desire to see suffering. It's a war between him and me, and until he wins or dies, he's bound and determined to let EVERYONE between us suffer. He kidnapped Kalinka, held her hostage and ruined both her life and her father's...He framed Protoman, he KILLED Mr. X...he went on and ordered the death of every last inmate and guard in Kotobuki Prison before he escaped. And that's just the names and places I REMEMBER. I can't let him win...I can't let his madness triumph. But by the same token, as long as all I do is just beat him...and he escapes to do it again...It will never end. There will always be more blood, more pain, more anguish on the world and on me. Never his. NEVER HIS." Rock's fists clenched up into tight knots, dangling by his sides as if they would spring arm cannons at any moment.

"And you tell me you know that the conflict in my brain pathways, the conflict that caused all the scouring, the wear, the damage...was between my core programming and my emotional circuitry?! You'd be right, Roll. You'd be right because they each tell me a different thing. My core programming tells me that because I'm a robot, I cannot harm humans. I cannot harm Wily. But..."

He cringed and bowed his head, shaking it back and forth as if trying to cast off a nightmare clamped to the side of his neck.

"But it also tells me I have to do whatever I can to PREVENT humans from suffering harm or death. I cannot harm Wily. I cannot. But every time Wily goes free, every time Wily escapes, he returns and brings more death. More blood!! The First Law is at fault, the First Law is wrong...how can I value the life of one madman over all the hundreds and thousands of innocents who will die days, weeks, months, YEARS from now if he continues on??"

Roll stood there, her eyes wide, her jaw slowly dropping as it all finally dawned on her. Just how serious the battle in Rock's mind was. _God, Rock...no, don't tell me you're..._

"I fight with my emotions, Roll. My emotions tell me I can't let innocents suffer. And as long as Wily endures, that is just what will happen. Somehow, some way, when the seventh Skull Castle was crumbling around us, I stared Wily down and saw an answer. An answer given by emotions, not by my core programming. My emotions overpowered EVERYTHING. The Laws didn't leap up, didn't stop me...they couldn't, they were drowned out...I became Mega Man to save innocent lives, to stop the madness, to put an end to Wily's reign of terror. And as Mega Man, with my emotions, I saw only one answer...There was only two ways that the madness would end. Either Wily would have to kill me, or I would have...have to...have to..."

Roll realized why Rock's voice faded off, why he couldn't complete that sentence. The Laws would not allow it.

_...Or I would have to kill Wily._

"It's over." She reassured him, brushing past the mind freeze just waiting to happen. "That was a month ago, it's over..."

Rock was trembling now as Roll helped him back to the couch and sat him down.

"I made a promise to myself, Roll. A promise that if emotions would bring me to that decision, that I would never again let them interfere." He looked up to her calm, soothing face for a reply. "Now do you see why I've been this way?"

"Yes." Roll acknowledged, brushing back his wild jet black hair. "Yes, I see." She looked at him. "Rock, you're stronger than you realize. You can overcome this. Your emotions are there so you can feel human. So we can feel human. But when you purposefully WANT to kill something, then you aren't human. You're like him, then. A monster. And I know you're not."

"It can't happen again." Rock said quietly. "I won't let it happen again." Roll drew him in a tight hug then.

"Don't let it happen. But don't lose who you are. You're Rock. You're my brother. And if you lose sight of that, you've lost sight of everything."

That tender moment might have gone on longer...

Had Auto not hollered out for Roll's batch of cable, and spoiled the ambience.

* * *

So time moved on. Blues knew instinctively of the conflict within me, and Roll had coaxed it loose. But there it ended. It was a promise I made to myself, a promise to them as well. To them, I would be Rock. I would be the gentle, caring and friendly spirit that they all knew and worried about.

I didn't even bother concerning myself with wondering if there was another conflict just over the horizon. I didn't because it was pointless. Of course it would come, with Wily standing in its shadows. And when that conflict would come, I promised myself, my emotions would stand clear of it.

Emotions had brought me to the precipice countless times. The last had nearly pushed me over. Never again.

_Never again._

In a way, if I were to look back over the years from the perspective of just the average person, I would begin to realize why they might think the way they do.

_Mega Man always stops Wily. Mega Man is our hero._

Seen from my own eyes, and not theirs...that statement is flawed. I always stop Wily because I have to. Because I have the potential, the power to uphold the First Law beyond any other robot in existence. And First Law demands I do everything in my power to adhere to it.

It's sort of like never being able to refuse an order. Robots. For all we're capable of...there's so much we can never hope to experience.

The months went by. Early summer slipped into midsummer, and at long last midsummer became fall. It was the fall of 2081 when it all began to heat up again.

Jupiter suddenly became a hot topic for the inhabitants of Earth. The last time it'd been seen with such interest was when it was bombarded with asteroid fragments around 90 years before. But this time, the show was different. Because it wasn't rocks crashing into the gas giant. It was lights that danced and sparkled all around it...lights that sparkled blue and purple. It was unnatural, a force that science couldn't explain. For all purposes, the only possible excuse to it was some form of mass hysteria. As if anyone would believe that.

And slowly, the light show dwindled. Specks of blue and purple, all with their streaks and brilliant flaring flashes began to die down, vanish from view. And I was reminded of an old saying...the flame that burns the brightest dies the quickest.

_It applied to them...but there were nights when I looked through a telescope and wondered if it applied to me. Me...undoubtedly the brightest star in the troubled times of the age of robots._

Pondering your own mortality is made all the more fun when there are times you question if you even want to get up in the morning. Knowing what you have to face, and growing weary every time you are forced to look it back in the eyes again and again.

It must have been about a week or more after the light show reached its ending phase that something happened on Earth. A pair of brilliant energy sources suddenly came crashing through Earth's atmosphere, crashing onto an island that nobody could ever remember seeing before. Dr. Light sent me to investigate, and that started it all.

There was a reason that nobody could find the mystery island on any map. It was artificial.

It was Wily's.

* * *

The Eighth Robot Rebellion spawned from that point. Whatever crashed on that island had been two objects with immense power. And despite blasting my way through  
"Wily Island's" guardian, I could do nothing but watch as Wily escaped in his flying saucer, a set of grappling arms clutching tightly to a sphere shining bright purple, with what seemed to be nodes stuck to the sides of it. That was only the beginning.

There was a second source of energy my father's sensors had detected crashing on Wily Island. And if Wily had made off with one, he had left the obvious other.

It was a robot, massive in shape and probably in power. But yet it remained untouched, seemingly knocked into stasis. Whatever Wily had run off hadn't come from this robot. And yet Wily had ignored the obvious second energy source that lay dormant within the helmeted juggernaut I saw lying in the crater at my feet...

It would be a while before I came to know why.

Wily's new Robot Masters were different. They ran off of an unusual energy source, foregoing microfusion tanks completely and instead drawing strength from orange sized spheres, each containing its own supply of...

Well, the same purple energy I'd seen Wily escape with.

The massive robot I rescued from Wily Island soon came awake and tore off through the roof of Light's lab, hurtling for parts unknown. Whatever drove him was powerful...far more powerful than energy sources that I knew of.

Rush and I trailed him, and eventually it was all revealed after an initial scuffle.

His name was Duo. And while I'd been battling Wily here on Earth, Duo had spent his entire life fighting "Evil Energy" out in the void of space. Evil Energy...the glowing purple power Wily had gotten, had been using in all of his new Robot Masters...

If anything, I suddenly didn't feel so alone. Because now I wasn't the only unlucky schmuck who got stuck trying to stop the inevitable doom.

We might have met as cautious foes, but after the struggle with the massive guardian on the outmost region of the First Ring of Wily Tower in that volcano base, we became allies. I had to stop Wily. He had to stop the Evil Energy. And seeing as our enemies had seemingly become hopelessly intertwined, so did our own fates.

Four Robot Masters later, making a total of Wily's traditional eight, Duo and I once again met in the underground chambers by Wily Tower. To myself went the 'easy' part of the mission. Infiltrating Wily's lair through the back way, the way a normal person wouldn't expect an attack to come from. Duo would fly on ahead and face the brunt of Wily Tower's forces, all of its turrets and cannons and sentries...he didn't care, and as I watched him fly off and wipe out entire squadrons of flyer drones with a sweep of his energy-laden arm, I realized why. It wasn't a challenge.

Wily traditionally builds his bases into the 'Four Ring' scheme. Meaning you have to start at the outermost Ring, the First Ring, and slowly work your way in through every one before you reach him at the heart of his sanctum. Traditionally. He's altered from it at times, but rarely.

In my own mission of the attack on Wily Tower, I had to face up against a cargo-loading robot and its decoys, a massive airborne bomber with lasers, air mines, and missiles of every shape and kind, and yet another version of the infamous 'Rock Monster' as a gelatinous green freak. I even faced Bass, fueled with the power of Evil Energy and fused with Treble.

Somehow, I managed to stay true to my promise. Defeating each and every one without letting my emotions get the best of me. Without succumbing to that numbing, powerful force. I made it to Wily, my attitude one of calm resignation to the path fate seemed determined to make me walk.

Duo saved me from instant annihilation, thrusting himself in the way of Wily's massive energy cannon and overpowering it with sheer force. But it took too much out of him, and it was only with Protoman's help that Duo was able to escape.

And then it was just me and Wily. And there I failed.

_Because despite everything I'd promised myself...despite the horrifying consequences that might arise, my emotions did get the best of me._

I remember what caused it. Wily apologizing after his defeat...and me bitterly reminding him how many times he'd begged for forgiveness before. This time, I didn't get the chance to even form a Buster. It was because a powerful force overwhelmed me then...

And when I woke up, it was all over. I was back home, safe in the care and love of Dr. Light, Roll, Auto and everyone else.

"Duo saved you..." Light said, choked up with so much emotion, his head cold grew ten times worse, clogging his voice like molasses.

So I was alive. Thanks to Duo. Thanks to a wanderer who had shown up out of the blue, and left just as quickly.

I met Blues out in the wilderness, just outside of where Wily's Spire had come hurtling from its base underground. It was Protoman who had been with Duo in those moments when I lay on the verge of death and life. With that quirky smile on his face, his arms crossed as he leaned against the crook of the tree trunk and its branch, we stood there, talking until the sun went down.

And then I looked up at that sky full of stars...And had to smile.

Because somewhere out there, was another like me.

_Somewhere out there, there was Duo. _

* * *

Years pass like snowflakes. As they happen, they're thick, moist...they can be large or small, and you can always remember them, because every one is different.

Duo came back in 2082. During those three years that he stood by our side, many things happened. Most noticeably the King Incident, but aside from that, it seemed as though Wily had given up on his grand schemes and felt content to throw already defeated Robot Masters at me...as if he was just passing the time.

Having Duo come back was a complete surprise...but a welcome one. He'd returned for he saw nothing out in the void left to do. And also because he was intrigued by Earth. Intrigued by me. By our situation.

Snowflakes...

_Snowflakes melt. For all their beauty, their splendor, their uniqueness, the things that make people stop and stare at them and break from their daily routines..._

Times change. People change. Though I didn't want to believe it half of the time, I had changed. If I had lived as I had in those opening months, for my entire life...just as Rock...

_Snowflakes are destroyed. They melt. They freeze with others until they're so unrecognizable that they might as well be ice. And in the end, it could be said that everyone on Earth ends up the same way. Enmeshed, their singularities forgotten as their times, their memories are archived in ice. _

If only things had been different. There were so many roads that could have been walked. If only Blues hadn't been lost in that laboratory accident, if only Wily hadn't been pushed to the brink of insanity, then Mega Man might never have come into being.

_And even the ice melts. When a strong enough force bores into it, the ice will crumble, will vanish from sight and memory. So in the end, it might be that all achievements, all the people who lived and died and fought and cried..._

And even earlier, if the Wars of 2040 hadn't happened, if Dr. Light's fiancee hadn't been killed...would he have bothered to create me, my brother Blues, my sister Roll?? Would the age of robots not even have come into being, if Thomas Xavier Light had been able to have a family of flesh and blood, and not steel and silicon...

_...Might all be forgotten. Like a stone face in the desert, to be carved away into nothingness by the sands of time, or merely buried, never again to see the light of day..._

But it didn't happen like that. I could spend the rest of my life wondering, pondering what paths might have been chosen...but that wouldn't change the fact that they were not chosen. That this is the road that was, and that I have to walk it. That looking back and wondering will accomplish nothing. Time is too short for that, too short for whimsy. We can only look forward. To tomorrow. And we can only live by today.

_People of ice, moments melted by age, all people are actors, and all the world's a stage...If we are the stars, then we're already lost to the past..._

_ For the stars that burn brightest die twice as fast._

* * *

I remember talking to Duo some nights. I remember because after the 8th Robot Rebellion, there was little else that troubled me, aside from the King Incident. And that was easily enough dealt with.

"Duo," I'd say to him, "Just why did you come back?" and he'd always turn to me with that enigmatic face, those clear set optics and that calm glance, and say without hesitation,

_"Because you intrigue me." _From what little of his own life Duo revealed to me, to anyone, he was a single warrior from what might have, or might not have been thousands to millions like him. His quest, like the quest of all the others like him that might or might not have been, was to seek out Evil Energy and the Carriers that...well, carried it.

"So why don't you go back to them?" I queried once, innocently enough. And his face grew sadder then, his eyelids drooped...

_"I don't know if there are any left out there." _He revealed to all of us that the massive lights display we had seen about Jupiter had been the climactic skirmish between his kind and Carriers. Their numbers had been numerous on both sides, and yet from the more than 50 warriors between them, only two survived. Duo, and one final Carrier, who burned upon re-entry into Earth's atmosphere. Re-entry...Funny way of saying that the Carrier perished because of friction, considering it'd never BEEN to Earth. Only the power core of the Carrier had survived. It was that power core Wily had made off with.

So Duo didn't know if there was anything left out there for him to accomplish. Earth was free of Evil Energy, fully and completely. Wily couldn't have hid any if he'd tried. Duo had mentalics.

Mentalics were an odd subject for me to grasp...Duo was a ROBOT, for crying out loud!! And yet, he had abilities that bordered on heresy and mythological witchcraft. The ability to 'sense' Evil Energy. To read minds. To reach out into the unknown and see past, present and future. But somehow, that never changed Duo. He'd grumbled how they only seemed to serve him when they wanted to, as if whatever force guided those senses of his enjoyed dangling the prize from a hook.

For all Duo knew, and didn't know, he was still alien. Remaining on our planet only because he had nothing better to do, because we were interesting subjects to observe.

But that didn't bother me. Duo had saved my life once. Duo had helped me to stop one of Wily's most devilish schemes ever dead in its tracks. And now Duo was another friendly face, another person I could talk to.

In a way...when I looked at Duo, I sort of saw myself. The warrior who faced madness so an unknowing, uncaring galaxy might be at peace. Just as I fought so an uncaring planet might survive on.

_"There may come times when you will feel everything about you fall into doubt." _He said to me one evening, turning his eyes from the stars above to scrutinize me with a gaze that more than likely had held a mentalic stare in it as well. _"It happens. But what you must realize, Mega Man, is that there are some things you must never doubt. Why you fight...You fight so that a new generation might live, without woes, without sadness and grief..."_

"So you're saying it's some sort of duty?" I queried back irritably. He looked at me again and shrugged.

_"Could you really bring yourself NOT to?? Even without your Three Laws...No matter how much you say you aren't the hero, that you aren't the one who wanted to face the darkness alone, can you say without doubt in your mind that you would not try to make some sort of difference??"_

There were times Duo was painfully right. He was right that evening.

I didn't ask to be Mega Man. I certainly didn't enjoy it.

And yet I still would have tried to make a difference.

_"Righteous spirits seek to better their surroundings. It's just the order of things, Mega Man."_

All my doubts, all my pain, all my worries and woes eventually began to subside, once I got to have a better handle on them.

But there was one thing not even Duo could have predicted.

In 2085...August, 2085...everything I thought I had a handle on was thrown upside down.

All because of a new project being built by my father whose name was the 24th letter of the alphabet.

X.

* * *

Here's the facts. In the afternoon of August 7th, 2085, Bass and Treble appeared out of the blue. Torn apart by a force stronger than even me. As if something was eating his mind inside out, Bass ripped his helmet off and clutched at his head full of purple hair, writhing about. But it wasn't a trick. Bass couldn't have faked THIS much damage.

Wily had just activated his craziest robot yet. One whose abilities extended straight into what a human possessed and more. It had shattered its way through fifty or more Robot Masters, before...before...

_My God, it had happened...Wily was dead. Wily was finally, utterly, completely dead. Not at my hands. At his own creation's._

Bass was many things, but he wasn't a liar. It was true, we all knew it.

More facts. It got worse. The Demon, as Bass called Wily's final creation, was coming here. When the sun crested over the horizon and brought daylight to Japan, an unfamiliar warp signal was going to appear out of nowhere, bringing with it death in a new form.

_We had less than a day to prepare ourselves for the most difficult battle of our lives. It would be me, Protoman, Bass, Duo, Rush, Eddie, and Beat and Auto against this thing. And even those odds seemed weak enough to fail._

And then came the point in the one-sided conversation where Bass turned up and stared into Light's face, his eyes faded and weary. And told Light that The Demon was built based off the plans of Mega Man X he'd run off with back during the Seventh Robot Rebellion.

_Mega Man X...God, the thoughts that ran through my mind when I heard that, heard Light acknowledge it with a frail human disbelief._

Betrayal?? Hurt feelings?? Inadequacy, the feeling of being replaced?

Those don't even come close to it.

Light took us all down into his lab, through a secret door only he knew about, down a spiraling staircase and into a room with tired blue lights, a massive supercomputer in one corner, and a capsule measuring exactly eight by fourteen feet. Who was in that capsule, you ask??

Underneath the fogged glass lay a robot unlike any other before. Superior to me in every way, the perfect fit of man and machine enmeshed together. His emotions would be REAL. He could love, he could hate, he could even cry...

_Light built him to be better than me. X...the one who would go beyond me._

Light turned to me then, told me nothing could replace me or my siblings. I didn't believe him then.

He even looked older. Whereas I was trapped in the eternal form of a 12 or 13 year old, X looked as if he was 17 or 18 years old.

Tabula rasa. X's mind was effectively a blank slate, he would learn like a human did. By experience.

So we moved on. The facts:

Light had come up with a new kind of robot, the prototype being Mega Man X. During the Seventh Robot Rebellion, Bass had taken X's plans as well as plans for Rush's enhancements to Wily. King had been little more than an experiment, a chance to test out some more advanced concepts without going full bore into the project. And now four years after obtaining the plans, Wily had brought his creation to life and been destroyed by it only moments later.

It had been built to kill me. To kill X. To hunt us down, and to destroy anything that got in the way. And after we were done for, to wander the world, a blight with no end.

So it had to be destroyed. Bass wanted to destroy the Demon because of what it had done to Wily, done to all the Robot Masters. Light wanted the Demon destroyed because of what it would do to X.

And I would face it because there was nobody else who could.

_Righteous spirits seek to better their surroundings._

So why would we fight?? How would we live? To let there be light, a beacon of hope for the world? For the future?? For the ages??

Each of us had our own doubts, our own thoughts as the sun fell and night washed over us. That I can't dispute. As Roll set to work repairing Bass, as Light busied himself rebuilding the Super Adapter, as Duo once again went up to the roof of our house and stared to the stars for answers, I left.

To the mountain.

* * *

Mount Fuji had always been a sort of consoling presence in my life. But for once, it wasn't. I sought for a source of solace, something to busy myself before tomorrow's fight.

_What, you think I was expecting to die? Do you think that now realizing Wily was dead, that I decided in some sick way my own time had reached an end?_

I was alive. I was alive, and Wily was dead. That was the truth. And I was just up there, trying to find comfort that wouldn't come. That's my view. Unless, you'd want an outsider's perspective.

**_Mega Man sat on a rim of Mount Fuji, wearing his famous blue battle armor, but refusing to wear the helmet. So the wind was able to play in his hair, brush by his ears and whisper sweet nothings._**

That's what someone else might say. And even then, it didn't last long.

In all my years, one of the most recognizable sounds I've discovered is a four tone, five note melody that can be hummed, whistled or sang...but only carries impact when whistled. And I heard that sound then.

Because my older brother was nearby.

"Protoman." I muttered. I knew he was somewhere near, even though I couldn't see him. Because for the moment, he didn't want to be seen. He was always like that. Came and went at his own pace by his own rules...Most times the humor in it makes me smile.

That night it didn't.

"I figured I might find you up here, little brother." He said to me, still hiding in the shadows. "Going off on your own and moping isn't something you do that often."

"So how did you find me then?" I queried back, not as much curious as I was making small talk.

"Simple. One, you love this mountain. And two, I've been doing this solo bull a lot longer than you have. This is one of the first places I'd look."

Well, that much was true...

_Considering his penchant for finding Wily's Skull Castles and Fortresses, it was almost obvious, wasn't it?_

But he came up here to talk, I reminded myself. So what to talk about...

The only thing. The thing that I couldn't get off of my mind.

_X._

"Why did dad do it?" I asked Blues, my voice beginning to crack.

"Do what, Rock?" Came his response, flippant and indifferent as always. This time, it didn't help matters.

"Build Mega Man X!" I exclaimed. "Wasn't I good enough, wasn't I everything he had ever wanted? Why would he build someone else to replace me?"

And now, my older brother finally came out of the shadows so I could see him, and was wearing a smile to boot.

"You goof. The same reason he built you. Because he learned from his earlier experiments and learned how to improve on them."

Realization is a quirky thing. Many is the time I've felt the lightbulb pop on.

_This time, it clicked on for good. Blues knew EXACTLY how I felt. Because..._

"You've had to deal with this." I croaked. Blues shrugged a bit.

"What, deal with the fact that my dad saw flaws in me, and dreamed of making something better? Hell yeah. I've been wrestling with that same thought in my own mind since I came back and saved your bacon in Wily's Castle during the Third Robot Rebellion." He said it calmly. It wasn't an issue for him anymore, and in that silent acceptance of matters, I could see what Blues was trying to say to me.

_So what if he's building another robot?? Nobody can replace you. Having you around didn't replace ME. It's just not an issue, bro._

"But then..."

"He doesn't love you any less, all right?" he rephrased, a little annoyed I stubbornly refused to accept his message. "Just because he's been building another robot that's a few notches above us in the evolution of Artificial Intelligence doesn't mean he's a man with no feelings. You're his son, you'll always be his son. It's just the way it is. Nothing can take that away."

_The basest of truths come from those who have experienced them firsthand. In this, like I knew that Bass was telling the truth about Wily's demise, I knew that Blues was telling the truth about Light's feelings towards me. I still had my own feelings about X to deal with...but now at least, I was sure about my dad's. _

You can know how people feel. And still, for all of that, you find yourself questioning fate.

"Yeah, I guess." I finally replied. But if dad hadn't come up with the idea for X, then Bass wouldn't have stolen the plans for him...and Wily would have never built his Demon..."

"Rock, you can't change anything now." Blues said back to me resignedly. "What's happened has happened. And tomorrow that monster's gonna warp onto Japanese soil and start his death march towards you and Light's lab. We can't worry about the past, the what-ifs aren't going to help us. Tomorrow, we're going to have to be on the top of our game. Everything relies on that."

And that's when Blues said something that didn't come across.

"What do you mean, everything..."

Neither one of us said anything for a while after that, our gazes locking onto the stars above and peering into their glimmering specks, partially blinded by Tokyo's lights below. He raised his hand into the air and pointed to space.

"I believe Bass. Wily's Demon was built to destroy you, and destroy Mega Man X. But anything and everything standing in his way is also going to be destroyed. And anything after he's done with us...if we don't stop him tomorrow, then he'll just keep trotting the globe, Rock. He'll just keep walking and destroying and wreaking havoc, he'll be the biggest blight ever to befall Earth. For them. For all the innocents that would be harmed by him. That's why we have to do this. Everything, Rock...Everything..."

His voice trailed off, and I was too absorbed in thought to say something in reply.

_Righteous spirits seek to better their surroundings. _

_ Snowflakes melt. So what am I, then?? A righteous snowflake? Don't kid yourself, Rock. That makes you sound like a poof. _

The Hell with it. The Hell with it all.

And then Blues stopped my thoughts again. This time, whistling. Whistling...the one thing I never did understand about him, merely accepted as a part of who he was...

"How do you do that?" I asked him. He stopped and turned to me.

"Do what?" He shrugged again.

"I just do it. Been doing it since before you were even a blueprint schematic. I just...sorta picked it up somewhere." I shook my head, pushing aside my current thoughts for the moment and settling onto the troubling ones.

"I can't help but shake this nagging feeling that tomorrow's going to be a day we'll never forget. If what Bass told us is true, then this Demon of Wily's was built stronger, faster, meaner than anything else. Not to mention he has X's brains..."

"I try not to think about it." Protoman replied quietly, a hint of dry candor in his tone.

"I don't want to, either." I replied sadly. "What if I lose you..."

"What if you lose yourself first?" He shot back with a grin.

"I'm not going down that easy." I retorted.

"Well, neither am I." He harrumphed. There was another pause, as both of us stuck our walls up, kept to our pride and our trust in our own abilities and talents to see us through, hoping that the worst would never come.

But if it did..._Heaven forgive me for thinking this..._I want something to remember. Something to hold close to my heart when everything comes falling down around me.

"But as long as we're up here, Blues..."

"Yeah?"

"...could you teach me how to whistle?" He folded his arms, cocked that familiar grin of his and looked at me.

"You really wanna learn, huh?"

"Yeah." I said back easily. "I've been hanging with you for more than ten years now, and I never bothered to learn until tonight."

He agreed. And we began. It was stumbling at first, but after thirty minutes...

_Imagine a chorus of angels. Imagine them singing for joy, for sheer happiness._

_ We're no angels. But we still sing, in our own way. Fallen angels, perhaps...Although more likely we're snowflakes. Humming about one final time in the chill of night...because we know that when morning comes, when we face one last sunset, it'll all be over with, and our legacy will melt. Only the sounds will live on, carried by the wind._

We'd had our differences. We'd even been enemies once. But now, none of that mattered. We were brothers. Tomorrow, we would fight to defend a third. Tomorrow, we would fight to protect the world. Not because we expected gratitude or tickertape parades. Partially because the Laws told us we had to. Partially...because we just knew it was RIGHT.

_Sing the songs of ages past, carried through wind to today and tomorrow, hear their many untold tales of all the struggles and the sorrow, feel it deep within yourself and carry it on for others to hear...For as long as you are remembered, then the void beyond holds nothing to fear._

* * *

The sun had barely crested over the horizon the next morning when Blues and I made it back to Light's lab. Our poor dad had spent the entire night working on Rush's Super Adapter, and done an ample job with it.

_We truly did look a sight as we stood there, the morning sunbeams casting down upon us._ _The whistler, the outcast warrior, the foreigner, the genius, the faithful mutts, the sister...and me. The hero._

Tut...I'm contradicting myself now. I'm not a hero. I'm not! I'm...

_The Hell with it._

I guess it doesn't matter much now what anyone thinks of me. Something about the smell of the air, the mood that permeates it...tips me off that I've got far more important things to worry about than how other people see me. How other people will see me.

The first strike would be given by me, Bass, Blues, Rush, and Treble. Duo and Auto and Beat and Eddie would remain here at the lab. If somehow, we failed. If somehow, the Demon defeated us, got through...

_Preparing for the worst?? Were we thinking that somehow this would all end with the Demon collapsing just outside of our front door? Grim, dismal...defeatist..._

But that doesn't matter now. Because for all my own hopes, I know a part of that's right.

It's an odd sensation. To wake up in the morning, to rally with your fellow combat veterans. And to wonder, to ponder..._Is today the day that it all ends? _Is today the time when I will die?

An old TV series with multiple spinoffs...Star Trek...had a character by the name of Worf who liked to say, "Today is a good day to die!!"

Perhaps to him and his war-happy, masochistic Klingon friends. Not me. I'm Rock. I live on Earth, in the age of robots. The Star Trek reality will never come to pass.

_I want to live._

And then everything is pushed aside. We say our final goodbyes...Roll walks outside, bedraggled and worried, and tells us to come back alive.

Bass and I reply at the same time, with the same answer.

But even that doesn't matter.

For there's a blight on the horizon...and it comes as madness in red.

_I know you're out there, Demon. I can feel you._

August 8th, 2085. A day destined to be forgotten.

By the future generations. Not us.

* * *

You ever get that feeling that today wasn't a good day to get up? Or that you had just turned tail and run the Hell out of there instead of trying to stop the madness??

_The Demon was unbelievable. King had been a menace, but even he didn't come close to what this thing could do..._

Everything about the crimson maniac bordered on disbelief. His boots spat fire and screamed, hurling him from point to point in the blink of an eye, allowing him to avoid any attack he chose. His Buster was red and white, and growled at a different...somehow more menacing tone before exploding and ending Rush's life.

_He killed Rush...I couldn't believe it, but he killed Rush..._

You're asking yourself, why should I care that the goofy mutt got atomized? After all, all he ever did was provide the Rush Coil, the Rush Marine, the Rush Jet, the Rush Search, the Power and Flight Suits, the Super Adapter, the Rush Cycle, Rush Bomber, Rush Mystery, Rush Health...

_Rush had been by my side since 2072. He'd been my pet. My faithful companion. The one who entered warzones with me, fought beside me...He'd always been there. And I hadn't been able to save him._

I hadn't been able to save any of them. Protoman and Bass both received critical damage from his onslaught. They screamed at me, told me to leave...told me to leave it in their hands now, that I had to get out of there...

_WHY?! Would it be any better facing him outside of Light's house than it would be to face him here?? Damn the both of you...if I leave you here, you'll die!!_

But then...maybe they wanted to. Maybe they knew that running wasn't going to help them. It would end here, and they would pull out every last stop. Every last tactic that bordered on self-destruction to try and take this creature down.

So I left.

_I left following their orders, Treble in tow close behind me. But still, I remember my thoughts when I left._

**It should have been me. It should have been me...**

* * *

Treble appeared behind me moments after I'd landed...

It took little time for the realization to sink in among the survivors that Rush, Blues, and Bass were gone. Gone forever, sacrificing their own lives in one final act of defiance and desperation against Wily's ultimate creation.

_Blast it, why...Why did they DO THAT?!_

And still, I found Blues' words ringing in my ears.

_"Rock, you can't change anything now. What's happened has happened."_

I hadn't been able to save them...I couldn't have...

_I couldn't change that now. _

Treble ran. Bass was dead, his master...The only person that robotic wolf ever gave a damn about was now atomized, killed off by a massive double Buster overload.

We all grieved a little for their passing. We'd miss Blues. We'd miss Bass. But we could only grieve so much. The Demon was still coming.

Even Roll volunteered to fight...because something had pushed her to it. Just like I'd been pushed to fight Wily so many years ago, Roll was now volunteering to help stop the Demon in his tracks.

_So why do we fight? What drives us on?_

Duo fights because he is with us. Because as long as he is here, he will do everything in his power to be an ally. It's never a question about him. It's a question of when he'd leave, and he hasn't yet.

Roll fights...Roll fights because she's seen her oldest brother and newest friend be blown into oblivion by the Demon. Losing loved ones does a great deal to push one to new ends.

Auto and the others fight because we do. Because they're loyal to us, they're the helpers.

_But why do I fight??_

I know why I fought with Wily. It started out to protect the world from him. And later, it transformed into something more. It transformed into an intense hatred he and I shared, a hatred that was unending, unceasing...A force that went beyond logic and sanity, and straight into the unknown variables called emotions.

Emotions drove me to the brink. I swore once that never again would my emotions get in the way. Never again would I rely on their power, their maddening rejuvenation, that artificial adrenaline when I fought. And even in that first fight with the Demon, I had held true to that.

_But then...that didn't matter now, did it..._

The Demon isn't Wily. Wily is dead. I no longer have to worry about him. It's just the Demon now. And he isn't human. He's like me. Artificial. I can kill artificial things.

_So why do I fight??_

For vengeance? To seek a balance for all the lives he's eliminated? To quench the memories of Protoman and Bass...of Rush...

For the world? A world who long ago stopped worrying about me, and turned to its own pathetic problems? A world who will forget the sacrifices we've made...

For X? To protect him, to allow him a chance to live, just as I was given a chance?

Or for me? For my own reasons. For my own feelings. For my own sense of justice...

_Why do I fight?_

I haven't quite figured that out.

* * *

Light remained inside the house, down by X's capsule with a magpistol in his hand, and if I recall, a pickaxe somewhere down in that place as well. So it was just us. Just us robots who were outside when that fiend came marching over the horizon.

_Blues...Bass...Give me the strength..._

The Demon now had a gaping chunk of his chest armor missing. The suicidal tactics of my brother and my former enemy had worked, to some extent...The Demon now had a weak spot, but the question came...would he give me enough time to exploit it?

_The look on his face, that same sickening smile he shared with Wily, the glint of madness in his eyes, the blood on his white gloved hands...For all the damage he'd received, he kept coming. _

"He truly is a Demon..." I heard Duo mutter in disbelief. I pulled my Mega Buster back protectively and began to charge a supershot as I rallied a reply.

"He's like a juggernaut." I growled. "You can't hurt him with the small stuff...you just can't..."

_But while I stayed calm, my emotions still held in check...Auto flipped out and fired._

My warning cry after the point did little good. Auto's missile had already been unleashed, spouting flames behind it as it seared down onto a direct course for the Demon.

The crazed bastard saw it coming. Didn't even try to avoid it. He merely lifted his arms up in front of him, as if welcoming the missile and the explosion to follow.

When the smoke cleared, he was still standing. That same sick grin on his face, his arms over the hole in his armor. Auto swore in his unusual manner...but it still accomplished nothing.

And then the Demon stepped free of the smoke and turned to me. His smile faded.

_He knew me. He still remembered facing me before, how I alone had escaped...Just me and Treble, and Treble was forever lost from all of us. _

"Yes, we've met before." I growled. Perhaps he understood me, perhaps not...that didn't matter. "But you won't get past me!!"

And then all of us fired. Auto hurled another missile, Duo cut loose with a massive beam of that blue energy he fought and lived on, and I unleashed a supershot. All three of our attacks were headed right for him. There was no way he could block them all.

And then he moved...

_God, there's a mind in that creature somewhere...a mind that told him he couldn't block them all, that a different tactic was merited._

He moved with such speed even I had trouble following him.

_He cleaved through my supershot with a swipe of his arm...Dodged Duo's beam as easily as sidestepping a running bull..._

And then he appeared in front of me, that sick grin once more plastered on his face. And threw me up into the air before I could even scream.

It wasn't until a few moments later I realized why he'd thrown me...

_Because he'd put me between him and the final attack...Auto's missile._

And then everything was a blinding flash...and pain.

**Caution. Backup hydraulic systems failing...Internal operations energy at 36...seek immediate repair...**

I don't recall what happened in the next few seconds of the fight...I finally came back to my senses when after I'd been lying on the ground as a heap, I was kicked airborne again.

When I finally stumbled to my feet, that's when I saw it. Roll charging towards the Demon, only to have him blink in front of her with the ease of breathing air.

_God...Roll, please, not Roll..._

I wanted to crumple up and die right there. The Demon drove his fist clean through her body, impaling her and then dragging her aloft, as if holding up a trophy. I had to save Roll, there was still time...

_So I ran. I ran faster than I'd ever gone in my life. I had to save Roll. I'd lost Blues and Bass, I wouldn't lose her, I couldn't lose her..._

I saw her whisper one...maybe two words, and then the Demon snarled and threw her into the air, bringing his other arm about and morphing it into his Buster.

_ROOOLLL!! No, don't do it, you Demon, DON'T DO IT..._

And then she was gone.

* * *

Pain. Sickening, gut wrenching pain. That's what I felt then as my feet skidded me to a halt and I stared blankly, disbelievingly at the air where Roll had once been.

_But she wasn't there anymore. Blues wasn't there anymore. Bass and Rush, and Eddie and Beat...They were all gone. They were all killed by this Demon..._

So it was just me now. I was the only one left. The only one of the Earth robots who held an inkling of being something more...something beyond the limits of the Three Laws.

And then there was the Demon...and there was X.

I'd once promised myself...FORCED myself...that as long as I would have to fight, I wouldn't let my emotions get the best of me.

_How could he?? How could the Demon destroy them all and still stand there smiling...how dare he...how dare he..._

I made that promise because when I fought with my emotions, I was brought ever closer to reaching a state of mind where I would have been able to kill Wily. Disobey the First Law.

_The Demon isn't human. He's artificial. And he's just killed some of the most important people I care about. Damn him...DAMN HIM...Wily, what did you do..._

"WIIIIIIILLLYYYYY!!" I hear myself scream.

_It's his fault, it's all his fault..._

The Demon pauses, turns to me, and he's smiling again. Despite all the damage he's received, he's still smiling...grinning that sickening grin I saw on Wily's own face time and time again.

_I can't let him get away with this. It has to stop. It all has to STOP._

If the Demon's allowed to live, then he'll keep going. Like Blues said...

_"If we don't stop him tomorrow, then he'll just keep trotting the globe, Rock. He'll just keep walking and destroying and wreaking havoc, he'll be the biggest blight ever to befall Earth. For them. For all the innocents that would be harmed by him. That's why we have to do this. Everything, Rock...Everything..."_

We all have our reasons to fight, I suppose. Bass did, Blues did...Even Roll in the end, died with a purpose for her sacrifice in mind.

_But what of me? What causes me to fight now, after Wily is dead, after Blues and Roll and Bass and Rush..._

_The one force that has stayed constant in my life, through every one of those troubled cycles. Fate. Some don't believe in fate, and I can understand why. To acknowledge the presence of fate is to say that there are some thing that can never be changed, no matter how valiant the effort. That you have no control._

_I can't associate fate with the others. I can't believe they were supposed to die. I can't believe fate had it already written that on August 8th, 2085 A.D. that Bass, Blues and Roll were to have their lives snuffed out in an almost futile fight. I can't. I cared for them...even Bass, in the end..._

**It should have been me.**

If anyone deserves to die, deserves to go out the way he lived his life...fighting...then it's me. Wily is dead, and now the Demon is the last enemy left.

_He has to be stopped. I can't let him get away with this, the suffering and the pain have been too great._

I know that behind me is Duo, staring at me, pleading with me to be rational, to back up and let us take him all at once.

_Not this time. This time, I'm not listening to logic. I'm not listening to rationality and cold unfeeling data. This time...the last time...I'm not going to hold anything back._

_ I'm going to let my emotions hold sway over me. They've gotten me this far, I've got nothing to lose..._

I'm sorry, Duo. But I have to do this. I have to.

And as I run towards the Demon, our Busters raising up and firing, I can hear Duo's thrusters kick on as he tries to reach us.

_It's not your time, Duo. It's not your fight. It's MINE._

I can almost hear a voice calling to me...a voice somewhere between the personas of Wily, of Rush, of Blues and Bass and Roll...Like they're calling to me from somewhere beyond the physical realm.

**_Why do you fight?_**

And I still have no answer for them.

* * *

It was a fight nobody would ever remember. It was a battle that would never be seen in military tactics 101, it was a conflict of the purest nature.

Two enemies trying to kill each other.

The only witnesses to the massive spectacle were Auto, Duo, and Doctor Light. Auto was useless to it, and Duo had suffered a blow early on, knocking him out of the competition.

A man in blue and a man in red struggled, screamed, fired and ran.

Mega Man...and a Demon that some odd thirty years from then would be known as Zero. In them lay unbelievable power. In Zero was the next generation of robotics, a generation whose contribution would come for their identical personalities to humans. And in Mega Man represented the crossing point...the missing link between the age of robots and the age of X. He was a robot with emotions. He was a robot able to defy the Three Laws. He had inspired the creation of a new generation, and now in his final hour...had reached that generation himself.

* * *

Neither warrior gave the other an opportunity to claim victory. The Demon would fire off his blistering supershot, that sizzling beam of plasma that had killed everything else in just one hit. And Mega Man would merely slide underneath it, releasing his own.

The Demon dashed to the side of Mega Man's shot, shooting off almost a dozen smaller plasma bursts in an attempt to overwhelm the Blue Bomber by sheer numbers. As a stunned Auto and a struggling Duo watched, Rock deftly contorted his body in all directions, dodging the onslaught with ease. There was something more driving him then, something that surpassed his basic programming. By resorting to his emotions...the most powerful combat enhancer Mega Man had ever come across...he had been pushed into a state of mind that put him on par with the Demon. Duo would say later he saw the birth of a soul in that fire...But all that mattered was that in the end, Mega Man was pulling out all the stops. He'd even disabled the safeties on his Mega Buster, and while still using only one, was summoning larger and larger charges.

No words were spoken between the two. None were needed, for none could portray the raw emotions burning between them then. Their rage. Their purpose.

_What do you fight for? Why do you live? When time comes to nothing, who can you forgive?_

Narrowing his eyes, the Demon dashed towards Mega Man with his Buster stretched in front of him, firing off at a rapid pace in an attempt to peg the Blue Bomber by narrowing the gap to point blank range.

But Mega Man merely charged towards the Demon as well, holding back his own power until it had built up into a supershot. He lifted his left arm up and fired, the blistering blue fireball hurling straight towards the Demon's midsection. Still, in landing his own shot, Mega Man received a blow to his shoulder, sending him stumbling back in pain.

Likewise the Demon stumbled back, one arm gripping at the damaged region of his chest armor where Mega's shot had sunk in with fizzling results.

_Vendettas live forever, rage is but brief, you can absolve it in moments or let eternity fill you with grief..._

And then it grew personal. Mega Man charged in screaming, his Buster vanished away as he relied only on his fists. Likewise, the Demon let his own plasma cannon vanish from view. Mega Man got in the first shot, a massive uppercut carrying so much power behind it it jarred the Demon to the ground. But somehow bringing himself clear of the new sensation of pain, the Crimson one snapped back up to his feet and clutched his hand around Mega Man's throat, holding him aloft with one hand as he reared his other back for a sucker punch to knock the Blue Bomber's head clear off his shoulders.

Snarling unintelligibly, the world's last hope swung his right leg about and buried its point deep into the Demon's stomach. The maniac's grip loosened and dropped Mega Man, just as he collapsed onto his knees and brought his arms around his wound again.

He coughed up blood then. Purple blood, the blood laid down in X's plans as the next generation's means of life support.

Rock watched the ground become stained with the liquid. He blinked only once before standing erect with his hands at his sides.

The Demon recovered as well then, standing with one arm now permanently protecting his wound and the other dangling loosely.

Reacting as one, both of their right arms snapped up, morphed into Busters, and fired the supershots they had been storing up.

_The blink of an eye is all that's required...you're alive one moment, and the next you're retired._

The Demon's supershot blazed in faster, angrier...despite Rock's best attempt to avoid it by turning about, it blazed a streak along his back, burning through armor and exposing his delicate inner circuitry.

**Warning: Multiple system breaches. Internal operations energy at 7. Prepare for immediate auto-stasis.**

** _Override._**

**Warning: Overriding auto-stasis may result in permanent total program lo...**

** _OVERRIDE._**

**Confirmed. Auto-stasis Overriden. **

The Blue Bomber's own shot was more successful, slamming straight into the wound and the hand covering it, despite the Demon's attempt to dash away from it. It hadn't mattered. Rock had predicted where he'd run...and fired.

The two stood there for several more seconds, gasping, wheezing, their eyes growing dimmer and duller as they neared the battle's end.

And then Rock's mind pulled back in on itself...screamed at itself, battling for self-survival.

_Look at him. He's weak. You've worn him down, Rock. You can stop fighting now. Call out for help. Duo and Auto can finish him from here._

_ **This isn't their fight. It's mine. **_

_If you keep fighting, you'll die. Drop into stasis...it's the only way you'll survive!_

_ **No.**_

_Why?! Why don't you want to live?!_

_ **Righteous spirits seek to better their surroundings.**_

_What kind of Boltshift is that, huh?! What, you wanna go out with guns blazing, you wanna die a hero?!_

_ **I'm no hero.**_

_ Then WHY?!_

_ **Why what.**_

_WHY sacrifice yourself?! Why do you still fight?_

_ **I don't know.**_

_Then QUIT! It's done with, Rock! Wily's dead, he's never coming back! And as far as the Demon goes, he's as near to death as you are! _

_ **I can't quit.**_

_Rock, you're strong...you're stronger than the Laws. You overcame the Laws, Christ, you almost went against the FIRST LAW! Why are you doing this, huh?! For the world?! They don't care about you anymore. They don't and you know it. Darkman told you as much back in the Fifth Robot Rebellion, and you know he was right!_

_ **It's not a matter of being right. It's not about defending the world anymore.**_

_So what is it then, huh?! Is it your emotions?! Are you fighting the Demon because you hate him so much you would destroy yourself in the process, just to see him fall to the ground and never get up again?!_

Even through the struggles of his mind, Rock could see the Demon staring back at him, his own dull eyes registering one last glimmer of effort as his arm came up. So Mega Man raised his up as well. The two began to charge their Busters. Continued to let them charge.

**Warning. Mega Buster at maximum allowable override safety.**

** _OVERRIDE._**

**Confirmed. Mega Buster continuing to build charge. **

_So this is how it's going to end, eh? You just couldn't let things be, could you Rock? Wasn't it you who said you just wanted it all to be over? Wasn't it you who screamed for peace?_

Mega Man said nothing to his nagging conscience, the part of his original programming still so hardwired to his brain, it acted as a separate entity from the persona that relied on his emotions. He merely watched the Demon's own gaze, locked with it, waited.

_You've changed. Fifteen years ago you wouldn't do this._

_ **Fifteen years ago, I did do this. And if you'll recall, I won.**_

_You barely made it out of that one alive. And you were facing Wily then. Not this freak. What makes you think you'll come out of this alive?_

_ **I probably won't...but that doesn't matter anymore.**_

Mega Man heard the sudden twinge in the Demon's Buster noise, that sudden drop in pitch that indicated immediate discharge. So he released his own shot.

Blazing blue met a brighter, narrower bolt of even bluer plasma. And yet the two were evenly matched. Neither won out...They merely tore at each other, their energies baking all around in a gigantic wave of heat and rampant energy.

**Warning. Internal operations energy decreased below minimum operational status. Total program loss imminent.**

_God, Rock...You've done it now. You're going to die out here. You're going to die because you wouldn't give up._

_ **So be it.**_

_But you still haven't answered my question..._

**Program shutdown in 5...4...3...**

** _Which was?_**

_Why do you fight??_

**...2...1...**

** _I still don't know. _**

_When will you know, eh? With less than one second to live, tell me...when will you know that you've done the right thing? When will you be able to stand up and know why you fought...why you died?_

_ **When X lives.**_

**...0.**

* * *

So that was it. On August 8th, 2085, I died. Blues died. Roll died. Bass died. Rush died. Beat and Eddie died. And Wily had died the day before, along with every last one of his Robot Masters in his Skull Fortress.

And yet our dad continued to live. Duo took off for parts of space unknown, a copy of X's plans and an old worn photograph of us and him in his possession. Duo had always mentioned one of his other objectives was to find out just who the makers were...just who exactly created him, and why.

And I know what happened to the Demon as well. He didn't die out on that field like I did. In the end, the best all of us managed to do was knock him into stasis...a deep stasis. Duo ended up taking him back to where he came from...to await the coming age. He never told Doctor Light the specifics, he just said that the Demon was important to the future. To the age yet to come. The age that X would help to create.

We never did see Treble again. But I know that he's somewhere out there, all alone in the world, with no master to guide him. Treble was fierce, chaotic...but for all the supposed animalian viciousness he held, there was one trait he shared with Rush. Intense loyalty to his master. He's still somewhere out there. And wherever he is, he's suffering. Because he's got nothing left to live for, and that's exactly the hand that fate's dealt him. Life. When he doesn't want it.

As far as Auto was concerned, he stayed by Light's side those next two years...two years which my father spent working and wasting away. Duo's prediction of the future had been vague. It had been utterly useless in the long run. And yet he still knew that the Demon would be around when X came into being. My father didn't want X to be a weapon of war. He wanted X to be able to choose his own path, live in peace...do the things none of us were ever able to, because of Wily's influence and the dark road he made us all walk. But if that day would come...if there would come a time in X's life when he, like me...his older brother...would have to fight, would see no other option but to go into war to protect something dear to him...Then there would be something waiting for him. My father's capsules. They were designed specifically to home in onto a very complex signal emanating from deep inside his mind alone. And if and when X needed them, they would be waiting for him. Able to grant him new armor, new abilities...everything he would need to survive. None of us would be alive when X was finally brought into existence. And I suppose Light thought it was the only way. A token for the next generation...momentos from a lost age. Auto himself was reconfigured into a robot designated RT-55J, and sent along with the armor capsule in the First Set.

Just how many sets did my father make for X...

Enough, hopefully.

And then there was X...

_My youngest sibling. My only remaining sibling._

Wily had brought his creation online by using plans of Mega Man X. And even though he'd designed the Demon to destroy me and X, there was the all too likely possibility that something had gone wrong. That something had gone horribly, horribly wrong.

Light activated the 30 year auto-stasis and testing period on my brother somewhere in April of 2087. It wasn't until September he finally got around to typing out the warning message that is now displayed prominently on the side of X's capsule on the monitor screen.

And yet, we all hoped that X would turn out all right. We dreamed, envisioned our sacrifices hadn't been made in vain...that all our efforts would pay off.

The age of robots had ended with the death of Wily and the subsequent deaths of all of us.

Thirty years from then, it would be the age of X.

The others went on ahead not long after we all died. In the end, we all have to move on. Move on, and hope for the best.

"Rock, why don't you come with us?" I remember Blues asking me, his familiar grin plastered on his face. Even after death, his spirit remained the same.

But I couldn't join them just then. I told Blues as much, and he shrugged before heading back towards Roll and Bass and the others all clustered together.

_They were all so happy then...It didn't matter what came next, they were together. And nothing could harm them anymore._

So why did I stay? What made my own wandering spirit stay tethered to the earthly realm instead of leaping with the others into the mysterious ethereal boundaries beyond?

Love, that's what.

* * *

The last thing Thomas Xavier Light remembered was inhaling poisonous fumes, feeling his lungs burn, but being too weak to cough. And then...well, he must have fallen asleep.

Two years...

_Two years of being alone. Of having my family torn away from me, of hiding myself in my laboratory and working..._

"Hey."

Somewhere along the line, Light had felt very tired. Even now, he was worn out, bedraggled, unkempt. And somewhere close to death. Yet even as he grunted to keep his eyes shut, to stay in that marginally comfortable zone of sleep, he felt a strong hand nudge him in the shoulder, and a voice speak up.

"Hey...come on, get up already."

_The voice...familiar..._

_ ROCK..._

"Whu...!" Light gasped, snapping fully alert. And once more, he found himself in his laboratory. Only it looked different now. Despondent. Like an overwhelming force had struck it.

But what stunned him the most was the figure standing in front of him, in dark black jean shorts and a blue T-Shirt. His raven hair looked ruffled, yet clean...

The figure smiled a bit and nodded.

"Yeah, it's me. How have you been, dad?" Light trembled a bit, then shook his head.

"No. It's not real, you're not real...you're a hallucination..." Rock frowned and folded his arms, covered in synthskin. His armor was nowhere to be seen now.

"Dad...what's the last thing you remember?"

"I was outside, sitting in my chair and..." Light's voice stopped suddenly, as he peered out of his hands and to the son he'd lost two years ago. Rock nodded sadly. "But...if I was outside, what am I doing...in..."

Light looked down at himself. His clothes were clean, not in tatters. His lab coat was freshly pressed...and the hardest two years of aging and suffering had vanished from his features. He even looked in a nearby monitor's reflection...he was younger than he'd been.

"Oh my God...Rock, am I..."

"Just like the rest of us now." His son finished for him quietly. Rock shrugged. "Nothing lasts forever, I guess. Not even us." There was a gentle smile on his face as he said it. Light's mind pounded with the sudden realization.

_I'm dead...like them...and yet, somehow..._

"But...Rock, you're a robot! I'm human...I can be a ghost, but you..."

"Hey, I don't rightly understand it that much either, all right?" Rock interrupted gently, shrugging away the new disbelief in his father's eyes. "There are a lot of things science can't explain. Like where that other sock goes, or why it's eight hot dogs to ten hot dog buns...Me being a robot and still somehow ending up as a ghost is just another one of life's little mysteries."

"So why are you here, then?" Light asked wearily. "And where are the others?"

"The others have gone on." Mega Man replied. "To the great beyond...or wherever the feck us spirits go after we've kicked the bucket down here."

Light had to sit down.

"So there is a heaven..."

"Errr..." Mega Man inhaled quietly. Light looked up.

"What?" The Blue Bomber shrugged and scratched at his hair.

"Well, it's sort of like jumping the gun. I don't know if there is one, and they didn't either."

"So what is there?"

"There." Mega Man said simply, grinning again. "Geez, dad...There are some things you can't explain. I thought I told you this already! We don't know what's out there...we just know it's THERE. It's like that old movie with Kevin Costner...Field of Dreams, or something like that...you know, the ghosts would always come and go through the corn. But you never knew what was beyond it. It was just there..."

"I see." Light muttered. He looked up to his son. "And the others...how were they?"

"They were fine." Mega Man offered easily. "Glad to be together, especially. They wanted me to come with them, but I couldn't."

"What, did you have unfinished business?" Light asked. Rock looked at him, a small grin on his face.

"In a way...I was waiting for you." He extended his hand out to Dr. Light and nodded. "Come on...it's time we best caught up with the rest of our happy family."

It was there that Light shied away from Mega Man. Quietly, he shook his head.

"No. I can't." He turned and looked to X, still sleeping in his capsule...only now clothed in a new blue armor, with a helmet that looked somewhat familiar...

Rock blinked a few times.

"I see you gave him his own blue suit."

"Yes." Light muttered quietly. "And his helmet...that's your old one. I had to make some modifications to it, but that's your helmet." Mega Man blinked a few times, then smiled.

"So you gave him a bit of his legacy then...even though he's going to be totally clueless about the events that led up to his birth, his creation, and the end of our age...he's going to have a physical momento." Mega turned back to Light, his smile fading. "But that doesn't tell me why you aren't willing to come along."

"There's still so much I could do for X..."

"As a ghost?" Rock interjected. "Be serious, dad. I've watched you these last two years...I've seen you suffer. You've done everything you can for him. You've given him a means to survive...and if I remember correctly, you even built a capsule dedicated to nothing but the tiny historical tidbits nobody on Earth will ever know. Because it was only known by us."

"Cossack's Capsule, yes..."

"I know why you don't want to come with me." Mega Man said softly, tenderly. He looked at his father with a sad smile. "It's because you're afraid."

"Of what?"

"Of the unknown. You're afraid that it won't work out, that somehow we've sacrificed ourselves for X, and he'll have nothing but a shallow and pointless life. That despite everything, he'll turn out to be as dangerous a blight as Wily's Demon. The beyond doesn't frighten you...what your own fate is. That doesn't concern you, because you want to move on. Yet all your worrying about X is what's keeping you stuck here." Rock motioned to the lab. "If you weren't worried about him, you would have moved on already. Met up with the others. But you're still here, your spirit's stuck in the same place you've kept yourself cooped up in the last two years."

"So?" Light queried back frantically. "Isn't that a healthy fear? To worry about your offspring?"

It was there that Mega Man paused, then finally stepped up and put a hand on his father's shoulder, looking into his eyes.

"Dad, do you remember back...to 2067? People had fears about Protoman back then. You had fears about Protoman. But he turned out all right...And in the end, despite your concern about me, I turned out fine as well. All of us did." He turned his head around to look at the gentle serene face of X, underneath his capsule's lid. "And so will he." Mega Man smiled and turned back around. "Just like we all did."

Mega Man took a step back from Light and motioned around the room.

"Take a look, dad. Take a long, hard look. Tokyo's gone. Mount Fuji's eruption wiped it off the map. It wiped your lab off the map. The world's already begun to forget about Tokyo, about us. This place is powerless now...the only thing still running is X's capsule, because you gave it its own independent power supply. There's nothing more you can do here."

Light shook his head.

"Seventeen years, Rock...that's how long it's been since this whole mess began. Even now...are you sure it will turn out for the best?"

"What will happen, must happen." Mega Man echoed back with a shrug. "This isn't our time anymore, dad. It's X's. We're just ghosts now." He twirled about and whistled a little bit of Protoman's tune, shaking his head. "Snowflakes."

"What?"

"Snowflakes." Mega Man stated again with a contented gaze. "In the end, that's all we are. Each one different, each one unique...each one destined to fall to the ground, to be lost among thousands of others...and to then melt, so the next snowflakes can fall."

"You sound confident." Light said with a weary smile. "It sort of makes me feel at ease, too."

"I've had two years of sitting around and waiting for you to think about my life." Mega Man said. He walked over and sat down on a bedraggled office chair and crossed his legs. "Two years tends to be enough time for a wandering spirit to sort things out."

"Do you have any regrets...any 'if only I'd done this' qualms?" Light asked sadly.

Mega Man stared back at him, fully at peace. His smile and the shake of his head said it all.

"We've done all we can now, dad." Rock echoed. He stood back up and held out a hand. "And now it's time to move on, and let time take over."

Light nodded, his own worried face at last washed clean. He tottered over to his son, and hugged him in a tight embrace.

"They'll all be there waiting for me?" Light whispered, his last fear begging to be sated.

"Yeah. And I imagine they'll have some lemonade too." Mega chuckled, hugging back. "Now get going. I'll catch up with you in a moment."

Light's ghost grew dimmer and dimmer...until at last, he completely vanished. Having crossed over.

And then it was just Mega Man...and Mega Man X.

X would never be able to consciously recall ever hearing his brother speak to him. He would never know how Mega Man felt about his existence. At least...not in the waking world. But, perhaps, at night...when he slipped off into dreams...perhaps he'd have visions. Of the family he never knew. And that was enough incentive for his older brother.

Mega Man walked over and placed an ethereal hand onto the lid of X's capsule, staring down at the face that seemed to mirror his own. A serene contentment.

"X...the world is yours now. We've done all we can. It's up to you. But remember this, X. No matter where you go, no matter what you do, we'll be watching. Smiling. Watching you grow up. Help the world, X. Our age is gone, and it'll be up to you to guide the world during your own age. But I know you're up for the challenge, little brother. You're stronger, smarter, better than we ever were in life. And you have the legacy." Rock put one hand over X's chest, and his other over his own. "It's the legacy of us, X. The Mega Men. So make us proud, X. Make us proud."

Gently, Mega stepped back down and walked into the center of the room. Yet something stopped him even then from leaving. He turned about, still smiling as he summoned forth a black leather jacket and slipped it on, turning the collar down.

"X, do you want to know why I fought? Why I fought in the end, when Wily wasn't around? It was you, X. I fought for you."

One last smile...and then the legacy was passed on.

Mega Man left the physical world the same way he'd often appeared and reappeared in it.

In a shimmering beam of blue light. A blue light that signaled a new beginning.

For the world.


	11. Epilogue: Another Sun

_**MEGA MAN X: WHISPERS IN TIME**_

By Erico

EPILOGUE: ANOTHER SUN

_**April 9**__**th**__**, 2117 A.D. Japanese Wilderness**_

In the wilds of Japan lay vast fields of nothingness, ground forgotten by time. Because of this, this site, and other ones like it were hallowed ground for archaeologists. Undisturbed soil meant that ancient fossils and plants would be in good condition.

Such was the case on the fateful day of April 9, 2117. A large convoy of hovercrafts skimmed the ground lightly, blowing dust in every direction. This place had been hit by volcanic ash, and the brown mixed with gray blackish dust. The convoy stopped and the vehicle's inhabitants emerged. But one was out first, an older man with gray hair and a beard. But this did not stop him. He breathed the air heavily, smiling as the sun beat down on him. He turned to his people and their robot assistants.

"All right people. Set up camp. Jim, I'll need you to set out the prelim gridwork." A man with brown hair and a younger age smiled at his mentor. Jim Dacker was the youngest worker in Dr. Cain's troupe. Their goal was to find fossils to prove Cain's theory on Mesozoic plant life, one which he had hypothesized by previous finds. Cain walked with a light step. He had been in his field since he got out of college, and his constant strain had kept him in fine shape. Some said he had found the Fountain of Youth, but whenever Cain heard it he laughed. "If I had found it, I would sell it!" was always his joking reply.

Jim Dacker turned his laptop on and activated the robotic probe that scanned their search area, grid by grid. Humans always went in to do the fine digging, for robots had never held the ability to work by senses, just pure mathematical data. The probe completed the scan and sent the information back to Jim's computer. Jim raised his eyebrows. Cain saw it and walked over to him.

"What's up, Jim?" Jim turned to his leader and spoke softly, probably too softly, seeing as the other worker robots were setting up camp and were always very loud.

It seems the probe has found something metallic buried in grid E-46. Probably some old volcanic deposit." Cain smiled again.

"First rule of archaeology. If something seems odd, then it's important. I'll start there." Cain walked back to his tent, just as a robot finished putting up his bed.

"Your tent is ready, Dr. Cain." The robot spoke, in a monotone voice. Cain nodded. He walked in and picked up his voice diary.

"April 9th, 2117. We've set up camp at the new site and laid out the preliminary gridwork for the dig. I got some odd readings at location E-46. It looks like something metallic is buried there, several meters below the surface. I think I'll begin there tomorrow." Cain clicked off his mike and went to sleep.

Little did he realize that time itself had been waiting for him to arrive.

* * *

_**October 26**__**th**__**, 2124 A.D. MHHQ, New Tokyo, Japan**_

X clicked off the datapadd's video clip and snorted.

"Yeah. Of course, none of 'em knew that they were directly over what was once Tokyo, the glittering gem of the Orient." He set the datapadd down on the rooftop's edge and sighed, taking his helmet off and setting it down as well. "And all the splenderous wonders contained within the moderately intact laboratory of the famed, yet forgotten robotics genius Dr. Thomas Xavier Light."

"Excuse me? Splenderous wonders? What kind of fecking nonsense is that now?" Came a familiar voice. X didn't have to turn around to know who it was.

"Aaw, get off it, Zero. Sometimes, perfect grammar isn't required."

"Yer damn right." Chirped the Crimson Hunter, walking over to stand beside his friend. He didn't say anything for a while, but finally motioned a comment. "So…how goes the trial?"

He spoke, of course, about the World Trial against all reploids. It had been instigated by what was considered to be one of the most crotchety, old fashioned dinosaurs left to roam the Earth, Emilius Cristoph of the AmeriCanadian Alliance, and prominent Global Defense Council member.

"Bad." X said tonelessly. "Real bad. Their entire case is based on bias, racial hatred, fears and prejudice."

"And they're still winning?"

"I'm afraid so, buddy."

"Politicians…" Zero grumbled. He shook his head, eyes glimmering in disgust. "That hasn't changed in over two hundred years. You play on people's fears enough, you can get them to move mountains, commit genocide, and brainwash their kids."

"Anything to get elected and stay in the public eye." X agreed wearily. He rubbed his gloved hands over his eyes. "The worst part is the emotional strain."

"What, you feel guilty for this?" Zero snorted.

"In a way, it's my fault…it's because they found me buried in that capsule that reploids came into existence…"

"Oh, stuff that." Zero chided him. "Need I remind you that a certain Doctor we know was the one who found you, and since 2117, he's never looked back on it? Sure, Cain may feel guilty about bringing Sigma into the world, but you? Nah."

"Sigma…" X muttered. His fist clenched up. "In a way, it's sort of his fault. Thanks to him and the two Maverick Uprisings, we've got this problem."

"Don't ask me to explain what goes on inside his sick mind, all right?" Zero grumbled.

"Well, at least he's gone."

"Oh, is he?" Zero snorted. X paused and turned to look at his best friend in shock. Zero looked back unblinking. "Come on. You thought he was dead after you blew up his Flying Fortress in the First Uprising. But he came back anyhow, didn't he? He came back to bug you on Cornus, and that defeat wasn't any more permanent, because he just turned around and attacked you during the Shadow Hunters Incident in 2122."

"Yeah." X muttered. "Somehow, he found a way to channel his persona through cyberspace, the same as Middy downloaded my own persona into the MHHQ's main…"

"Aack, STOP!" Zero groaned, rubbing at his head. "Look, I don't wanna DEAL with the tech shyte. It just happened. Leave it at that."

"Yeah." X said quietly. "So now I'm just up here thinking." Zero blinked a few times, then reached down to the datapadd beside X and scanned it.

He looked up, a gentle smirk on his face.

"What, you think delving into how Cain discovered you is gonna help our case any?"

"Oh, fine." X muttered. "You're a reploid, Zero. How do you think I should handle the defense?" Of course, X had no way of knowing, just as Zero didn't remember, that Zero wasn't a reploid. He was a prototype, the same as X.

"Hell, that's why I leave the paperwork to the pencil pushers." Zero grumbled, scratching the back of his head. "So I can avoid bureauspeak and stick to what I do best. Kick Maverick ass."

"Well, anyways." X continued. He looked back out over New Tokyo and shook his head. "No, I wasn't examining that old datafile for something for the World Trial."

"So why were you looking at it then?" Zero queried, intrigued by X's sudden change.

There was a look in X's eyes as he stared out over the starry horizon and the night lights of New Tokyo. A look that seemed to pierce beyond the normal…and into something more.

"You're trying to reconstruct your past." Zero finished silently. X nodded.

"Not exactly my past…as much as the past of my family."

"What, like the original Mega Man and Doctor Light."

"You're forgetting the others." X corrected his friend. "There was also Roll, and there was Protoman, and Mega Man's dog, Rush…And later on, there was even a big green goofy twip by the name of Auto, according to what little historical data remains intact."

"What, you're not sure?"

"Mount Fuji erupted on October 15th, 2087. Three years later, the world fell into the War of 2090. Luckily, that one wasn't as harmful as the Wars of 2040, and the only changes that came from that one was the creation of the GDC and the formation of the AmeriCanadian Alliance. Still, a lot of data was lost. Including almost everything about Old Tokyo. It was almost a myth until Cain stumbled across Light's lab seven years ago. That's why a lot of information about the age of my family is so shaky."

"Oh, peachy." Zero muttered. He rubbed at his temples. "Well, just what exactly do we know for sure?"

"Doctor Thomas Xavier Light and Doctor Albert William Wily were associates in the Second Rainbow during the Reconstruction." X mouthed, speaking from memory of what he had researched. "When the Second Rainbow broke up in 2067, they'd created a robot by the name of Protoman. While Protoman still was held in check by the Three Laws, he developed certain…personality quirks. Including an incessant need for whistling. He was lost in 2069, and Light and Wily went on to build Mega Man, Roll, and the first six Robot Masters in 2070. That was when Wily flipped out, and started the Robot Rebellions, which lasted until the end of 2081. From there, everything gets sketchy. By mid-2085, all mention of Wily, Light, Mega Man, and company vanish." X shook his head. "It's like there was some sort of cataclysm."

"Huh." Zero muttered, folding his arms. "So, you can't find your past, eh?"

"It's difficult to." X agreed sadly. He looked to Zero. "At least you have a past."

"Not exactly." Zero replied. X blinked and looked to his friend. "Pardon?"

"I said, not exactly." Zero shrugged. "The first thing I remember, I came to in the MHHQ's Medical Bay."

"You mean, you don't remember your past either??" X asked in horror. Zero nodded. "And it doesn't bother you?"

"Not particularly." Zero chuckled. He ruffled X's hair. "But then again, that's why I'm different from you now, isn't it?" X smiled a bit at that and lightly punched Zero in the shoulder.

"Yeah, I guess it is…"

Zero yawned, then blinked as he examined his internal chronometer. "Well, X, I think I'd better head back down to the halls and get me some sack time. Hazil doesn't exactly enjoy it when I come in with more wear on my systems than need be."

"Aah, get going, you big lug you." X snorted cheerfully. A bitter wind blew by, causing the both of them to instinctively draw their arms tighter around themselves.

"Hmm, it's getting cold earlier this year." Zero commented drily. "You stay up here and freeze if you want. I'm heading down where it's nice and toasty."

X grunted a bit, but kept his gaze out to the horizon. He could hear Zero close the ceiling hatch behind him.

And then it was just him. Alone.

Like he'd come into the world.

"There's so much I don't know." X began unsteadily, looking into the stars above for guidance…hoping that somewhere was his family, watching, listening…

"A lot of historical data was lost in 2090, a lot of it's fuzzy." X continued sadly. "And I figured…Well, maybe you'd have the answers."

He looked down at his helmet. Blue, streamlined, with a red crystal control chip cover embedded in the forehead.

"A lot of things have happened since I was brought online…since I was born, I guess you'd call it." X continued. "The guy who found me…he's a real nice guy by the name of James Cain. Using the plans that you used to build me, dad, he built an entire race of robots like me. Only they're called reploids."

"Only problem is reploids, like me, were too human. Most of the positions they were put in was hard labor, stuff they usually gave to robots and convicts. And they didn't like that. Even I didn't like that. We were our own spirits, our own people. We weren't robots." He shook his head. "Some humans couldn't accept that. Even now, and ESPECIALLY now, there's a new breed of discrimination and racial hatred on Earth. Only it isn't against Jews or blacks or Asian people…it's against reploids."

"And some of them decided to fight back. Reploids who fought back, turned against humans…were labeled Mavericks. Dangerous reploids. Irregulars. The Maverick Hunters were created by James Cain under the guidance of the GDC. And ever since 2118, we've had Maverick Hunters. And we've had two Maverick Uprisings."

X dipped his head a bit in shame.

"I've…done questionable things. I've killed reploids. I've killed fellow individuals who spawned from my designs. I became a Maverick Hunter to stop one Maverick in particular…a former Maverick Hunter known as Sigma. He's led both Uprisings…and thankfully, only two. I stopped him both times, using the armor capsules that you built, dad. I don't want to fight…but when I have to, they're there. And I'm grateful for that."

"And now…Now, the GDC is leading a World Trial against all reploids. I'm the defense counsel…and if I don't win this case, then every last reploid on Earth will be considered a danger. Every last reploid will be killed…and even I would be looked at for destruction." X's eyes watered a bit, the beginnings of tears. X could cry…Like no other before him had been able to.

"It's just a real bad situation. And the only other people who've ever had to deal with something like the mess I'm living in now is you guys. The family I never knew." X looked up to the stars again. "I hope…I dream…that you're up there somewhere, watching over me…It's easier for me to deal with that loneliness in my life if I think that somewhere beyond the known world, you're all still cheering for me."

X hopped up and dangled his legs over the side of the MHHQ, sitting on the rooftop railing. "I know that you'll never be able to sit down with me, to give me all the answers to all the questions inside me. But I want to know that I'm not alone. I want to know you're listening. That you still care about me. That I'm not just some abandoned project you all forgot about." He sniffled a bit and rubbed the tears from his eyes. "That's all I ask."

And then, just like that…

He got a reply.

The chill October wind blew by, causing him to shiver uncontrollably again. But unlike before, there was something in it…

His ears perked up.

_A whistle…A whistle??_

And then he felt something on his head. Something cold. Something wet. Something…

Before his eyes, a stunned X watched as a gentle powder descended from the massed clouds above. Zero had been right. It WAS gettting cold earlier this year…

Slowly, a grin stretched across X's features, and his tears were replaced by another kind of water. The water that came from white crystals from heaven.

"Snowflakes…"

And as he warped his armor away for a more conservative T-Shirt and blue jeans, X shut his eyes and let the tiny snowflakes pelt him, and the chill wind blow by his face. All his doubts, all his fears, all his worries were washed away by that gentle tickling of their message.

He could hear them then. He couldn't explain it, but…somewhere, beyond what his eyes could see, somewhere where only that feeling in his throat could sense it…he knew they were there. He could hear them.

And he could feel them.

In the Whispers In Time.

**END**


End file.
